On Awakening

I am not the glorious leader’s biggest fan. I haven’t been since the referendum, when the blinkers I’d forced onto my eyes in a bid to slavishly emulate the ‘hail messiah’ frenzy of all those around me (so I came late to peer pressure, I came didn’t I?) fell onto my big toe. The agony…they were after all very large blinkers, they had to be…was compounded by the awfulness of the truth I was then forced to confront. We had let those buggers in AGAIN?!?!? The sheer enormity of the bigger picture forced a temporary overload of all sensory circuits. This led to an almost immediate atrophy of all personal systems of protest. Sure there was a whimper here and there, but that was only when I was really pushed, like the time an army truck drove over my foot and I got angry enough to smack my toddler.

By and large, there was complete silence. Reflection was simply my face in the mirror.

When I woke up, it was three years later. I was a housewife and mother. And the buggers were still around. They were, in fact, in my city. I knew this because I was in labour and stuck in traffic. It was taking forever to get to the hospital because the buggers were in fact moving from point A to point B hence everyone else had to be held immobile at point YOU DON’T COUNT for as long as it took for the visiting dignitaries to move out of range of their accusing fingers and angry glares. As I pushed my feet against the floorboards, gripped the armrest, gritted my teeth and continued my breathing exercises I distracted myself by thinking negative thoughts.

Now some well meaning people will tell you that it is positive and not negative thoughts that are the ideal distraction. Those well meaning people be wrong. Learn from nature. A hungry lion will not assume the lotus position and plan Bambi’s akika. A wounded buffalo in the bush does not decide to blunt its horns and weave wild grass mats instead. Similarly, females in labour across species are close to the new Madonna than the old ones in terms of aggression. You feel pain. Like the baby, you simply need to get it out of your system.

So as I waited in line, I let negativity burst like noxious spit bubbles from between my gritted teeth. My husband had been expecting something of the sort. He had still not recovered from the tongue lashing he’d received for holding one hand in mine during my last 17 hour labour while using the other to play space invaders on his cell phone. But this time it wasn’t aimed at him. This time, it was all about those who had created the obstacle between my epidural and me.

“Remember how they promised to be different?” I spat at a traffic policeman. He was wearing a uniform. In Pakistan’s version of the Matrix, the Uniforms were the new Suits.

“Uh huh.” The husband revved the engine.

“Things are broken. We will fix them. We will fix the ones who broke them!” I chewed briefly on my knuckles.
“Right.”

“ We didn’t’ break them hence we are qualified to fix them. You know this because we are telling you.”

“Absolutely.”

“And what boggles the mind, what really really boggles the mind, is the enthusiasm with which we bought it! I mean AGAIN?”

“Yes.”

“I mean”, and I took a second to work myself up some more with visions of articles about Okara (God knows the suddenly omniscient TV channels hadn’t covered the story) and Sui and attacks on mini marathons and women’s melas “how long will we be comfortable with the juxtaposition of progressive rhetoric and retrogressive practices? How long can you clamour for peace and tolerate warmongers? How long can you justify overlordship in terms of economic progress when most of the fruits of that progress are lining the coffers of the camp that caused most of the problems in the first place!”

“How long I ask you!” For the first time he sounded interested. Impassioned.

“No I ask you.”

“That’s what I said! How long I ask you!”

“No…how long I ask you…”

“How long you ask you?”

“No how long she asks you!”

‘Who? Where? Whoozat?!” He turned and looked suspiciously into the back seat.

“Never mind.”

Traffic moved. We moved with it. Like sheep caught in the rush against the barbed wire as a predator approached.

“Sheep,” I was still fuming when we finally drove up to the hospital and found a handy parking spot right by the gate, “that’s what we are.” The contractions, which had started two hours ago, were getting pretty strong now.

“Are sheep even halal?” He asked absent-mindedly while the guard at the gate frisked him.

“We eat sheep all the time!” He was distracted, I knew. Angry wife in labour, or possibly the overenthusiastic body search. “Are you thinking about crow? Because we eat that all the time too…” I trailed off to stare in disbelief at the other guard who, ignoring the rather dramatic way in which I was leaning against a wall breathing strangely in between choppy sentences, was rummaging in a leisurely fashion through the toiletries, undies and baby stuff in my bag.

‘That’s right” I snapped in his direction, “ make sure you examine that nursing bra extra carefully, it could be the next big thing in surreptitious garroting.”

“Come on come on” hubby nudged me forwards as the guard finished his seemingly ceaseless rooting (apt prelude to baby, what?) let’s get you inside.”

“Heard the one about the guard who had a Johnson’s baby Q-tip pushed so far up his nose it went through his brain?”

“Try to think peaceful thoughts.”

“He died you know!” I managed to throw under hubby’s elbow as he dragged me towards the door, “and wait till I tell you what I can do with my disposable breast pads!”

“Baby,” hubby said in his patient voice, “it’s not his fault.”

A light dawned at the end of the tunnel. Since we were still in the foyer, it was a good thing it wasn’t the baby cresting. It was the realization that it really wasn’t his fault. It was them again. The buggers.

“Burn!” I shook my fist at the sky outside “burn buggers burn!”

They brought a wheelchair to whisk me upstairs out of earshot of other people quickly.

On the way up I asked the elevator man if he realized we were all spineless, thoughtless, witless, afraid. He pretended not to hear me. “And deaf, don’t forget deaf!” I added merrily.

“He probably can’t understand you”, hubby observed as the lift stopped.

“What’s deaf in Urdu? Bera? That’s waiter isn’t it? Haha! No it would be behri wouldn’t it? Hum kehtay thain hum behri hain” I did my best BB impression.

“We’re all ocean-going” hubby translated helpfully.

“Well there certainly are a lot of us. If we all pooled together”, I tittered, “we could be an ocean. And if we gathered some momentum we could be ocean going…”

“Who’s going to make us all pool together then?”

“Good question. But here’s the good news,” I turned to the lift man again, “you don’t have to worry about things like thinking because the Uniforms will do it for you.”

We exited the elevator. “The Uniforms are coming!” I yelled happily at an elderly couple.

“Waiters” he added as they stopped, “she means waiters. Some canteen this hospital has, huh?”

Then I was in the OB Gyn ward having my shoes and husband removed.

“Hello,” the head nurse beamed happily in my direction, “how are you feeling?”

“Epidural.” I replied.

“Can you describe what kind of pain you’re having?”

“Yes. It hurts.”

“ Theek theek, I’ll just examine you. Try to relax.”

“Epidural!” I yelped again.

“It’s too late for an epidural because you’re already five centimeters dilated. Why don’t you pee into this cup instead?”

It seemed like a poor substitute. I said as much, after I said epidural again a few more times.

“I think it’s a little too late for that. Maybe if you’d gotten here earlier…”

The resident agreed when she came in and examined me. But, following my eloquent speech about how it was never to late for pain management and how I had specifically asked for the anesthetist to be present and showed them where my gynecologist had written EARLY EPIDURAL on top of my form in big block letters they went and called the anesthetist. She left immediately.

My doctor was also on her way.

A little later both called in to say they were stuck in traffic. Someone seemed to be in town.

I writhed on the bed and plotted my revenge. The pain grew like a landfill in a city without city planners. I had some Entenox. My eyes rolled gently upwards in my head after a deep inhalation of the Nitrous Oxide and Oxygen mixture. Things looked a little better. I considered having them permanently pinned at that angle.

Someone said ‘she’s fully dilated.” There was an echo. I realized the doctor and the anesthetist weren’t going to make it in time. The baby came. As I prepared for the final push the nurse leaned in and whispered in my ear “don’t shout”.

“Don’t shout?” I turned to her and bared my teeth “I WANT to shout!” So I did. And I remembered why I used to like it so much.

Burn buggers burn!