Deprivation

The prelude: The falsa's have been eaten, the letters written and read to whomever they may obliquely concern. Now I shall address the oblique concern itself. The spiritual toothbrush that reaches between the jagged gums of my demons and gently wipes away the plaque inside.


And to think this is just the beginning of it. Excuse me while I touch wood. My Philips electric energy saver, you are with me every moment of everyday (with a few notable exceptions), why don't you go pollute someone else's water supply?

The setting: The Karachi we all know, love and secretly doubt. Can a city of 12 million truly be this lovely? If something gnaws at your insides in the dead of nights here, it's probably rats.


The people: Daubs of water and oxygen on a landscape in shades of monoxide, executed by a supreme Creator who is, at this very minute, wondering where he put the turpentine and rags. They secretly resent the airspace other bodies inhabit, but on your face they'll wish you all the happiness your bladder can hold.


The problem: Verbal diarrhea compounded by our innate inability (as a people) to be direct. So…We're at the beach contemplating fanta sunsets and the coke can as the center of the universe. The snake man comes, the cobra in bag, mongoose in arm. Remember mothers admonitions (great aunt had a python so she should know) and I say "No. We're not interested." He turns to leave. Something, mongoose nails on skin maybe, makes him start and he drops the bag. Six feet of scales and imagined slime ooze our way. I freeze. You back away. The shuffle of your feet attracts the snake and it follows you. You move like figures in an arcade game, the Diamond Head is joystick to your fear. Out of the corner of my eye I see the snake man approach, this is my moment. I defrost, deepbreathe and rush in to sweep you off your feet and out of danger. As the man secures his livelihood in his bag you cling to me, muttering "my love, my life, my health insurance…"


None of this actually happened. I doubt it ever will. Not just because you and I are not on speaking terms but also because you're 70 lbs. heavier than me and my shoulders, though willing, are unable.

Sometimes I ask myself if this is normal, these waking dreams where I play man to your woman, Julio to your Romiet, Testro to your Estro. I convince myself it is. I see it as a direct result of living in a society where my gender at birth condemns me to the passivity of the pursued in the mating cycle. I am discouraged from having my own expectations, encouraged to live up to others. Does this bother me? Naah, I like being a pawn in someone's twisted game of cosmic chess. Occasionally I try to escape. I find a man, a clean man, I can respect. I make plans for a bright, gender free future where everybody will walk around flat chested and convex navelled talking about birds and books and the silly farts that once ruled Pakistan and are now just so much worm food. Invariably, somewhere between the first equality conversation and the last intense tubelight examination (I'm not ashamed of my body if you're not ashamed of yours) I find I'm laying myself out for him. I'm beginning to resent his near perfection. I'm disgusted by the way he agrees with me. I'm no longer looking forward to living a well adjusted life where we will presumably make like minded friends, drive eco friendly cars and save any number of poverty stricken souls from the horrors of the gutter.

But when you tilt your head a certain way bell chimes in my brain "oh look" I think, "the man is beautiful". I forget then what we were arguing about (much of our time together is spent justifying our imminent separation). For a dazzlingly brief moment in the mockery of time I look at you without anger for being like me, without fear for being different enough to leave me, without expectation "will you wash your face on my birthday". It passes. We call ourselves cynics. Personally, I think we're idiots.

The stage is set. You and I in married bliss. Entwined like ivy and pillar in our own house of horrors. My life is going in the right (as seen on TV) direction; must I go with it?

I believe in astral projection. I believe in out of body travel. If we were unable to separate from physical reality, how would we survive the inferno of frustration that is Karachi? We talk about sharing experiences. The theory is that sharing experiences is good for you (not like sharing Pepsi where you also have to swallow backwash) because it's cathartic, vicarious learning and inexpensive to boot. The cost incurred during the transferal of poison from one mind to another is dismissed. With politicians slinging mud at each other and mothers fitting the collars of their domination onto their daughters' neck what is the cost of my telling you I hate the man who brushed against me in the street. You want what I have? Hate. My toxins will mate with your toxins and we will grow old and bitter together.

In the early nineties the then PM plus helicopter plus entourage nobly helped one family share it's experience with the entire nation. A young girl was gangraped, her entire family devastated. He flew to their god-forsaken part of the country and was captured on film hugging the girls weeping father to his breast. He had a most stoic expression on his face. And the 1245.5 people he's brought with him (presumably to carry his suitcase) also had the most stoic expression on their faces. It was, in general, an ennobling experience. As a viewer I feel proud to have been an integral part of what I shall call "one families humiliation; the gangbang story."

Crude eh? I knew you'd approve.

Lewdity is contagious. I went to an Urdu movie yesterday and came out having these uncontrollable urges to leer at people, to grasp and fondle myself. I stared wistfully at flowerbeds that needed sprinkling, women that looked as if they should be touched (which in an Urdu movie means all of them). I tried to talk my nose into running so I could insert a finger up my left nostril. I wanted to be a man. I wanted to belong.
Yesterday the papers carried an account of how the body of a murdered little girl was rotting on a garbage heap while surrounding police stations quarreled over who had jurisdiction. "The dogs had got to the", it read, "the dogs are devouring her as we speak."

Stray dogs are the least of our worries.

You're at work as I pour my bile onto these pages. The world is a cruel place. You're a cruel man (you must be if you're a man). I'm a fool for wanting the arms, legs, phobias and all. Now that we've established somebody is counting the bodies, what are we going to do about the walking wounded?
We laugh at "the west". Faces contorted in a rictus of laughter as we scratch out armpits and howl like rabid monkeys. "S&M" (heehee) "S&M"(heheh) "S&M) (chortle). How do you respect a nation that pays for pain when we can so easily manufacture our own?

Just add water. But do remember to boil it for 20 minutes first.

Morning stumbles in. If I walked 50 miles north of here I would still be in somebody's back yard. If I walked 2 miles down the road I would be ankle deep in seawater. Tell me, which direction should I take?
The untutored frenzy of our movements, the mile deep traffic jams on Zaibunnisa street, you'd think we were alive.
I look to you for guidance. I want to hold your hand as we cross the street. That big truck with "reality" painted on the hood and prongs on its fender wont hit me if you're there.

Stutter. Stammer. Back Away. Cradling your own neurosis, what do you need mine for?

We cluster like flies on the fruits of our sameness. More than anything else this is what binds us together. Affection stretched tight as a drum as ancient forces beat upon us till one day out of the dull Grey a gentle hand appears. In old trashy novels they'd say, "You and I can make beautiful music together." Now a voice that can simply be heard over the din outside is enough. Never mind about the words, they ceased to have meaning long ago.

This is not how to write a love story is it. I wouldn't read it to my daughter if I ever had one. I might read it to yours if (or when) you leave me. I'd ambush her in a doorway, gag her (no need to blindfold my features are memorable only in nightmares), seat her on an orange crate in an empty house and trace the path of the antibiotic (you) as it wends it's way through the intestines (me).

If I were a dog, I'd be a stray dog. With a scar across my pelvis where the bullet penetrated.

The eucalyptuses in the garden are bent. In places the bark has been ripped off by unkind hands, a stuffed garbage bag is impaled on a fork. What kind of people are we that we even strip and sodomize trees?
But wait! Maybe the tree was asking for attention? Maybe it winked at a passer by? Maybe it exposed a particularly welcoming hole in its trunk? When it dressed up it was "asking for attention" (BIG NO NO), when it looked especially ugly it was "asking for attention" (BIGGER NO NO). Asking for attention is obviously a crime of far greater magnitude than burning an Edhi ambulance and loan defaulting.

Is it just me or is everyone in this country on drugs?

At some point in time I will be accused of gross generalization. I will have committed the crime of tarring and feathering the elite of the country and then their entrails across the other 129 million. I have one response to this. I have no sympathy (well..a little if you're a good looking man) for those who have the weight of numbers and the intelligence to know their rights on their side and still allow themselves to be led up the garden path.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that infamous garden path novelists and politicians have blindly promoted for years leads to obscurity.

I've finally understood the contemporary school of thought that advocates that man and woman should be kept separated unless married or closely related. Apparently all that talk about man being the "paragon of virtue" and "the brainy mammal" is just that..talk. Man is actually a creature that acts purely on instinct, procreation being the dominant one of course. Shall I spell it out for you? Are you shy? (You'd flash your mental knickers on a talk show but you won't say "shit" in public). If man and woman were allowed unrestricted access to each other, we'd breed like rabbits and subsequently no one would be able to have quality relationships (like we do now).

I'd be lying if I said procreation hasn't been on my mind lately. That and frustration and the alienation of being the only woman I know who admits there is more to exploring my sexuality than fingering my labia. Actually, that's not precisely true. I knew a girl in college who ran around shouting "I want to be loved I want to be loved". We pitied her then (we had powerful hand showers in the dorms you see). If I saw her now I would clasp her to my bosom and ask her if I could run alongside. The way I figure it, if both of us are loud enough, we might actually get somewhere ... You think "does she mean me?'

You are thinking now "When she talks of procreation does she mean me?' There is a persistent pain in your skull. A fly perches on your nose but you are elsewhere considering the thought of you and I entwined like ivy and pillar where the traffic light should be in the sea of cars that feed the soul of this city. You concentrate, the karakoram highway with all it's dips and curves appears on your forehead.

The light is fading; my eyes are beginning to hurt. The bitterness is winding down; it's spent itself trying to scale the walls of my nonsense. This is, in reality, the last barrier between you and me. Our common fear that we we'll scratch each others surface and find just another person.

Will you wake at night to soothe this violated woman shaped membrane shrouding the inconsistencies of fifty years of violence and deceit?

This is my story. Leave me and you die.