Erosion
A pile of
bricks rests on the side of the curb. The curb was black and yellow once upon a
time but it is faded now, the paint had gotten bored, slid off and gone to
brighter horizons. You can see the dull beige of the stones.
A
motorcyclist zips to the right, cutting it close to avoid a muddy pothole.
The sky is
blue, brilliant, fresh, as if just colored in an hour ago, serrated streaks of
clouds stretch across one part.
Neat, calm
houses line the street and the traffic is rude, which is normal for 5:45 pm on
a Tuesday.
Short
stubby trees line the sidewalk that divides the main road and as the wind
rustles, three green leaves fall off and onto my windshield.
Inhale.
The
grounds are quiet, scattered with broken chairs, spilling piles of notebooks,
lonely shoes without laces and stains of blood.
Smoke
still lingers in the sky that has lost all color.
The trees in the courtyard and by the boundary
walls are quiet, stooping, immovable, stunned. The leaves still bright green from
their morning shower.
The
echoes of sirens have stopped. It is quiet for 5:45 pm on a Tuesday.
A lady
stands at the tea station, her hand moves in quick circles as she stirs her
morning tea. Steam rises from the green and white cup.
There are
three photographs, and several post-its pinned to the desk separator in front
of me. Just past it, two colleagues talk to one another, one of them tells a
joke and they laugh.
The soft
patter of fingers flying across a keyboard, the ring of telephones, the squeak
of a chair being pushed back too hard. The elevator beeps and a man gets off,
bent under the weight of three cardboard boxes.
Exhale.
Hide,
mouths a teacher, the sound of a door being closed quietly is lost in the echo
of gunshots. Her students cower on the floor, beneath desks and chairs. A boy
reaches for his friend’s hand. Another notices the eraser he had lost earlier
this morning, it lies right in front of his nose and he wraps his fingers
around it.
There
is a poster of Quaid-e-Azam pasted outside grade 6. He looks young, and kind.
There is a pale blue chart next to it, which has a quote about knowledge and
light. Its top right corner has become unstuck and it droops slightly, the tape
discolored around it.
The
sound of shoes scraping against the coarse floor, the slam of doors being
thrown open. The rapid fire of guns. The held breath of a dozen children, the
thump of their hearts. A cell phone rings, rings and rings, never pausing for a
minute.
The fairy
lights hang from the left end of the curtain rod. The lights are from Thailand,
brightly entwined around tiny bulbs. The room is dark and dim, save for the
warm glow of these lights.
The
silhouette of books fills up the shelf, a ceramic vase stands at a strange
angle, probably
pushed aside to lean behind the shelf for the TV switch. Two
picture frames stand at different levels of the shelf. The people in them look
happy.
The gentle
hum of the stabilizer, the blinking blue of the PC, blinking again and again,
flashing in front of my eyes. There isn’t any sound except for that of our
breath.
Inhale.
It’s a
dark path, narrow with the walls of the night pushing in from all sides. There
is no moon, there are no stars, there is no sky. A dense fog hangs everywhere.
There is no sound, there is no movement.
It catches
me off guard, the sight of a blue sky as I turn onto the main road towards my
house on my way back from work, the quiet conversation of people in the morning
in office, or the glow of the lights in my room when I find myself suddenly
awake in the middle of the night. Flashbacks of a place where I haven’t been,
of a horror I didn’t experience except through the news.
Sometimes
it isn’t anything concrete, just a sudden jolt, and my heart feels heavy, like
an anchor thrown into the sea, slowly sinking, sinking into unknown depths, a
physical sensation that almost overpowers.
Living in
Pakistan, we’re not strangers to grief. It was in 2007 when the term “suicide
attacks” became part of everyday language, from the 7 blasts in 2006 to a
staggering 54 the next year. And it hasn’t stopped since then, all the trauma
reduced to statistics for digestion and survival.
It is the
end of 2014 – eight years is a long time. It is long enough for a baby to be
born, learn to talk and tie his shoelaces and start grade 2. It is enough to
wipe out memories of peace, of what life was like without the barriers, the
snipers, the extra police, the headlines, the photographs of bodies and blood;
enough to make you realize that if you are to function like a normal human then
you had to ration your grief.
And so we
did. Our minds adopting a cunning, unconscious means of comprehending
brutality:
For
casualties under 20, we skim the newspaper, shake our heads sadly (unless the
targeted area is unfamiliar). Places in KPK, Balochistan and most of Karachi
have featured in the news so much that our eyes and our hearts have adapted.
When the
number of dead reaches 40 and beyond, our heart skips a beat and a pallor
surrounds for a few minutes. We pray for the dead and their families and then
change the channel.
60 and
above, a longer prayer.
I remember
the suicide attack that killed 61 people in Lahore at the Wagah border on
November 2. I remember the shock, the sheer number of deaths, the incredulity
at the unlikely target. The story about a boy who had put a picture on
Instagram, at the Wagah border with his friends, just a little while ago. I
remember being there with my friends around six years ago and the thought was
heart wrenching. But two hours later,
the feeling had subsided and I was eating dinner.
Every now
and then the scale reaches proportions that make me cry, that bring me down for
a while and swathe me in hopelessness and anger.
But
nothing like this.
Nothing
has shook us like this before, nothing has interrupted our days like this, our
minds, our hearts, suddenly overcoming us in the middle of dinner or the drive
back home, leaving no room for comprehension.
And it
makes me mad. It makes me mad that this is who I have become, that it takes a
tragedy of this proportion to affect me like this. It makes me mad that we have
to ration our grief, because in reality, the lives of 13 children killed in a
school bus are as precious as the 132 gunned down on Tuesday.
I remember
the Boston bombing. I was in St. Louis at that time and I remember the horror
of my class mates and colleagues, everybody was glued to the TV and in shock. I
remember seeing that three people were killed and the word ‘only’ flashed in my
mind.
I’m not
downplaying the tragedy, just the injustice of living in a country where three
deaths isn’t even worth a shrug. Because we have to move on. Because if you
look at the number of bomb blasts in our country, it peppers the calendar like
sunny days on a weather forecast.
But
sometimes, the injustice of it all, of having to move on because we have to,
crushes me inside.
The walls
shook, the floor heaved
A light in
my heart
Went out.
I’ll sit
still for a while,
In the
dark
Because
it’s too soon
To get up
and move.
take a
look at these links for some cold hard facts:
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