The heat. Not clean heat, mind you, the kind that dries after a
short respite under a fan, but filthy in its contempt for comfort, and yet
sensually passionate in its sheer degree. It can envelope your body,
making you feel as though you are walking through raw cotton soaked in hot
oil, and yet in doing so, make your movements graceful and fluid as you
glide through the air. Quite the paradox. I will not bore you, however,
by extolling the virtues of painfully humid heat while comfortably writing
in a nice, climate controlled bungalow.

Memories of Pakistan, my country, the land of the pure, feature
the heat as a character, as evil as any dictator. Days in which the sun
was a batsman gone mad, beating my brow with its relentless rays, and
nights in which I would sip a chilled Tom Collins, thanking the powers
that be for whoever the hell Tom Collins is.

The sun in Pakistan separates reality from illusion. It grows
every day, becoming larger, brighter, far too bright for our eyes, our
souls, which are used to the soft dull hue of our lies. Reality, laid
completely bare, is ugly and illusion, as someone surely has said, is a
thin veil. I know. Ive seen it.

While I was in school in Pakistan, I ran away from home. Fed up,
I suppose, by the shackles placed on me by my well-meaning, but
suffocating parents. I also suspect, looking back now with all the
maturity and experience of my twenty years, that it might have been some
sort of adolescent ritual I needed to go through. Most of all, however, I
wanted to experience independence, impossible here. I wanted to be free
of all restraints, to think and do as I would. So, with some cash,
ideals, and the still strong optimism of youth, I set out to carve my own
niche, utterly free.

I vividly remember the first and only day I was free. It was,
admittedly at first, exhilarating as I traveled to areas of the city I had
never seen before, nor since. Tower, Mahmoodabad, Baloch Colony, Jacob's
Line... I became enthralled by the wild sites, the
louder sounds, the more exotic scents. Humanity was stripped of
pretension, and knew its place, its purpose, its meaning. Sisyphus on a
grand Islamic scale.

The initial joy, however, was fleeting, an illusion crafted by the sun,
I'm sure. Soon, dark, naked children gathered around me, khakis and shoes
smacking, to my embarrassment, of prosperity. The stench of poverty, was
real,unfiltered, emanating from the open sewers, over which, now, a dark, naked
child smiles, squats. The heat was more pronounced in this place,
combining with the stench, the dust, the despair to create an atmosphere
more oppressive than any regime could hope to be. As night grew closer I
became weary, not knowing what I should attempt next, and fearful of what
a Karachi night could do to one with some cash in hand. Before midnight,
I returned home, defeated. I remember , vividly , the a major reason I
decided to reenter the shackles.

I realized that I would not be able to sleep without
air-conditioning.

On that day, my illusion of independence was laid bare, as the
heat became a mirror of the kind the Hesse's Steppenwolf is thrust in
front of. Like Haller, I saw, "...the reflection of an uneasy
self-tormented, inwardly laboring and seething being." Like Haller, I
shuddered when faced with my inability to handle independence...or
loneliness, as Haller would call it. And so I returned home to sleep in
chilling comfort, the heat far displaced, my illusions returned as I
plotted my next great escape to take place in what passes around here for
cool weather, my existence content in the shackles.

A year removed from my brief escapade, the days became much
warmer than usual, which, as you may well imagine, meant it was remarkably
hot. The sun had grown, Im sure, and swallowed the rest of the world; my
city, my street, my house, were all that was left. I awoke one bright,
too bright morning in a frantic sweat. I knew that various reports had
deemed beforehand that this day would be on of the hottest in Karachi
history. I awoke resenting my parents, who lured me into what was
basically, at least as far as the atmosphere went, hell, and who indeed acted as hell's gate-keepers. I
awoke resenting myself for allowing them to lure me into hell, but it
wasn't their fault, you see, it was the sun.

The sun cast a hazy spell over the city, causing its inhabitants
to move as if in slow-motion. My recollections of this day are painted
onto my mind by an impressionist, as I recall the images of that day, but
can not recall their forms. Slowly they marched, these pliant and
malleable images, through my realm of perception, cursing, sweating,
existing but not quite.

As I wandered onto the street, the autos and men and landscape and
sky and ground all seamlessly and rhythmically became one under the sun's
strange spell. I, who once broke through shackles to assert my
individuality, embraced the heat as unifier, my fate finally beaten into
me, as it had been beaten into the masses, and, indeed, into the earth
itself. Reality came forth, hideous, illusion a leaf, small, tiny,
floating so slowly to the ground. I saw it.