Posts
|
together, warming themselves, casting a glow over the evening shadows. White. Grey. Soft |
Gold. It could be a picture on a postcard, like the ones they sell at the supermarket. Imagine, |
being part of a German postcard. A black dot somewhere to the left. |
You spot a slightly displaced bench. It seems to have drifted in along with the tide. You walk |
towards it, leaving arthritic dents in the snow. The nylon of your windbreaker gives off faint |
whistles as you sit. The whistles are cold. You seat your grocery bag next to you, cup your |
mitten hands over your mouth and breathe out softly. The warm moisture permeates through |
the wool and cools into the creases of your palms. And when you pull your face back, a ball |
of mist momentarily floats in the cup of your hands before fading away into the icy air. You |
take out your diary and begin making a sketch of the view. You have always been good at |
drawing trees. "Witch Trees", you Once used to call these leafless ones. When you are done |
with the first tree you begin drawing a witch, crookedly perched on one of its branches. But it |
ends up looking more like a scribble. "Wich Tree" you write the way you used to spell it |
Once. There. Your own German Postcard. |
A lazy bus hisses by and stops a few feet from you. You wonder if this is the bus that will |
take you back to his – your – apartment. You read German as if it were English. |
"Order..misterrr..strabay," you read out loud. You pick up your obese grocery bag and your |
diary and the bus takes you away. |
You take a seat behind two middle-aged women. Their conversation sounds like a series of |
It reminds you of your own language, Pashto. A relative – you can’t remember who – once |
told you that if you ever wanted to hear what Pashto sounds like, put two rocks in a can and |
rattle it loudly. That’s Pashto. |
"I'm leaving!" your mind interrupts. |
"No, that would give it away too easily," you reply, looking into the grocery bag on your lap. |
The shapeless potatoes wobble as the bus moves forward. |
"We need to talk." That’s how the people in the movies say it. |
"We need to talk, I can't take it anymore," you test out loud. One of the women turns back |
and eyes you from above her magnifying spectacles. You give a reluctant smile. She returns |
it – reluctantly – and looks forward. |
Your mind repeats the line. There. Much more original. |
You look out the window, as white merges with grey and gold blurs by. |
------------------------------------------
He is back from work. His investment-banker-shoes clomp against the wooden floor. The |
compact snow wedged under his soles lets out a grainy crunch. A testimony from where he |
has been. |
You stare at his reflection in the kitchen window. He takes off his coat and turns on the TV. |
You lose him in its glare. The TV pulsates as he changes channels. You go back to rinsing |
your potatoes making sure the water doesn’t splash too loudly against the metal sink. |
He is wearing a grey sweater that once came to the doorstep in a parcel with a postcard |
attached to it, "Itch Leibe Dich" - it was the first German sentence you learned. The easiest |
one you learned but the most difficult to comprehend as it sat there, three simple words, on a |
crisp, vanilla-colored postcard addressed to your husband. Hus-band. What a strange word it |
still seems after two months. The first time you heard it being used for you was a week before |
the wedding. |
"Is he your friend?" Your three year old cousin had asked. |
"Who?" |
"Your husband. Mama says he's your husband. What does that mean?" |
He walks to the fridge. You stay still. Inertial. |
And then, as he bends over in front of the fridge, a faint light illuminating the dark crescents |
beneath his eyes, the inertia breaks: "I need to tell you something-" |
The back of your skull heats up. As do your ears. |
"Hmm?" He faces you now, Diet Coke in hand. He looks different from the wedding pictures. |
More content. Like a fat man, after eating roasted chicken and potatoes. You see his eyes |
drifting to the sink where the potatoes lie in a bowl of water. Your head is still warm. |
"Nothing." |
As usual, nothing. |
You begin peeling the potatoes. He returns to changing channels. |
------------------------------------------
That night you want to write down what you feel. You sit at the coffee table in the kitchen. A |
solitary bulb casting an umbrella of light around you. You tear out a page from your diary |
and write "I feel:". You stare at the paper for a while. Nothing follows. |
You try to look through the nearly opaque window. Frosted moisture occasionally breaks into |
jagged rivulets, revealing fractures of the view outside. You think of the postcard that came |
with the grey sweater. It was the first of many postcards, all with the same curly handwriting |
scribbled on them. There were phone calls too. He would go to the guest room after having |
dinner and stay in there talking in German for an hour and fifteen minutes every night. And |
you would sit outside, ear pressed against the wall, German-to-English dictionary in hand. It |
had become a routine. The only routine you had. |
A chill creeps up your socks and asks you to hurry. You sit a little longer looking at the |
window. And then you get up, leaving the paper waiting, and go to bed. |
He pretends to be asleep. |
Sex? No. |
All those hours your wise-with-age aunts had spent explaining exactly how you were |
supposed to please him had only gotten them excited, no one else. On the wedding night you |
had come out of the bathroom, having changed into the nighty that your cousins had deemed |
"sexy enough" for the occasion, to find him lying on the bed, back turned towards you, |
bedside lamp switched off. You stood there for longer than you imagined, cleavage showing, |
thighs bare in front of the back of a fully dressed man. |
You sleep now just like you had then; on the farthest end of the bed, not allowing a single |
spring to creak. |
------------------------------------------
You dream that you have turned into a Wich Tree. Wich-Tree-You tries to cover itself with |
leaves, but there are none. There is only a web of frozen branches; immobile, frozen |
branches. Wich-Tree-You asks the other trees for help but they only speak German. |
------------------------------------------
The next morning, while still in bed, you take out your diary and flip it open to the postcard |
you drew at the bus stop. A Wich Tree to the left with a scribble on it. You take out a pen and |
write: |
"Dear Mother, |
I feel nothing. |
Love, Me." |
------------------------------------------
A week passes after posting the card and you are inundated with phone calls. Your reply is |
always the same, "I feel nothing". |
Another week. Your mother sends you an airline ticket in the mail. You stare at it for a while, |
knowing exactly what it means. You wonder how to say your goodbyes. A big argument |
perhaps, and a slammed door? You think of how you will start. |
"I'm leaving"? |
No, that would give it away too easily. |
"We need to talk."? The way the people in the movies say it? |
Nothing? |
You pack, board a plane, stay suspended in the sky for four and a half hours. |
When you finally reach Pakistan, the sun is blinding. You are taken to your parent's home. |
The maids, the aunts, the cousins all greet you with perfectly manufactured smiles – wide |
enough to look welcoming, tapered at the ends to show sympathy. |
Sympathy. Disapproval. |
Eventually everyone becomes tired of asking questions. Except your mother, of course. She |
serves a question with every breakfast, lunch and dinner. |
News about him comes to your house like a contagious flu – hiding in the sneezes, whispers |
and coughs of visiting relatives. They sit on the same sofas where they had congratulated you |
two months ago on having found the perfect match. Now, they say he has married a German |
woman – Ursula. Her name says to you, "Itch Leibe Dich". |
"Ish Leebay Dish". Two months have taught you that they pronounce "ch" as "sh". Just two |
months. |
On the third week of your arrival, your mother brings you a carton of your old drawings to |
rummage through. You rummage. Most of them are sketches, half-finished. Some are water |
color paintings from school days; powdery paint on jaundiced paper. You take out one of the |
paintings. It has stiffened with time. You bend it. It gives off a painful crunch and paint chips |
off from where you must have accidently applied an extra drop Once. A black dot now lies on |
your white bed sheet. It's just a black dot. Flick it off. Author: Anoushe Shehnaz Hassan (LUMS) |
