The Aftermath - Part 4

I forget sometimes. I am always thinking of her, of course, but sometimes realization hits me like a wall of bricks at the most inopportune moments. I am cooking, or sitting in a very important meeting, or playing with my daughter, and I am reminded very suddenly — jarringly — that she is not here anymore. It's a momentary disorientation, an inadvertent pause in the swiftness of the day. And then I begrudge this knowledge, this rediscovered truth of my mother's gaping absence in my life. How long did the forgetfulness last, I wonder. How long was I able to trick myself into believing that her voice is waiting for me at the other end of the phone? Was it seconds, minutes, hours? It couldn't be hours. And so I think back to the time I had hit this wall of bricks the last time. In the morning while making coffee, last night, the week before, and so on. 

I feel forever trapped in the vortex of that night, and I remember most clearly only the warmth of clothes just out of the dryer, the smell of the fabric softener, the softness of each fabric and the neat piles I made while my daughter slept. I remember being suspended in a state of numb acceptance and impending action: she’s gone, now what? I often feel this way now — the time to come stretches vastly and uncertainly, while the time past remains unmoving, unforgiving. I still don’t talk about it — there is not much to say and yet there is so much to experience, to feel, to go through. Two years elapsed between the first and second paragraphs of this post, but I am still right there, in the eye of the storm, teetering.

Time Capsule

I am reminded again tonight that the small hours are really the best for writing. It is past 1 AM -- I have studied somewhat half-heartedly for an upcoming exam, first in my daughter's bed as she drifted off to sleep, and then downstairs at the dining table after putting pound cake batter in the oven. The house smells sweet now, lived-in, welcoming. I didn't intend to come here tonight and write -- mostly because I need to relearn how to sift through the detritus of too much change that occurred too suddenly. There is a lot of pull I feel towards writing, but there is also a stronger force that does not allow me to focus on one coherent thought or topic. There is too much intangible clutter in my life, and the contrived neatness of my tangible reality helps, but only a little. Or perhaps more simply, you can call it inertia.

The reason I decided to show up and write this time is not because inspiration struck while I was brushing my teeth before bed -- actually, in a way, perhaps it did. I have placed on the shelf next to the sink a small framed picture. The picture must have been taken in the year 1988 or '89 -- I look about 3 or 4 years old (in the blue and white shirt). I chose the unusual spot for this picture quite deliberately -- it is something I see every morning and evening. I don't often dwell on it or reflect on the happiness of my childhood, but it's always there, a comfort to me. I have no memory of the day this picture was taken, but I've imagined it. It must have been sunny, maybe spring of '89. A Sunday. No school, no work. The kitchen door would have been propped open by a chair. Something had to have been on the stove -- a pot of daal sputtering. My father must have told us a story, gathered us around him. He must have been taking pictures of us -- his three girls -- as he did frequently. And maybe I climbed on to his shoulders and my sister wanted to trade places. Maybe he thought it would be funny to get a picture of all of us stacked like that. Americans would say, "like pancakes;" I prefer "like books." What a lark, my parents must have thought. How wonderful to capture this moment. I could ask them how it really came about, but I am afraid of being disappointed if they don't remember that day with as much clarity as I've imagined it. What if it was actually overcast? What if it wasn't even daytime? What if the house was silent and the picture was taken only moments after the baby started to cry? What if someone hastily arranged the girls this way to entertain the baby, and oh there was a camera, so click, flash, off you go? Not nearly as romantic as my imagination. 

But that doesn't matter. What matters is the significance this picture holds for me on bleak days. There are many of those -- when I am struggling to find meaning in my mother's illness, or when I am desperately trying to be a good mother myself, when I am bleary-eyed wishing for more sleep, or worried for a big test or a presentation at work -- this picture grounds me. It tells me, look, there you were, all those years ago, and those are the people who loved and love you still. It gives me a deep sense of kinship and repose even on days that leave me drained and somewhat lonely. It calls me home, too, a call I resist over and over. Maybe tomorrow, I say. Maybe next year. 

So much love in one frame. And so much magic. 

The Storyteller's Daughter

Isn't it strange how certain actions or habits start to mean so much to you despite the unlikeliest of origins? For instance, I started to drink coffee back in college because it made me feel grown-up. Gradually, I came to depend on it on the eve of a big test. Now, I am unabashedly addicted. How odd that something so natural to my everyday existence as daily cup(s) of joe originated from a desire to feel older, more mature, experienced. 

I wonder sometimes why I started to write. Do I honestly believe, as my parents insist, that it's in my blood, it's something I inherited? Or do I believe the other reason that I often give to myself and others: I write because it's a defense mechanism. I process everything by writing: hurts, slights, grief, joy, wonder, aches and pains even. But what if the real reason is neither of the two? What if the real reason is hidden so far into the crevasses of memory that there is no way to tell what it is? 

I have a theory. When I was a little girl, my greatest accomplishment as I saw it was being my father's daughter -- it was no accomplishment, I know that now. It was pure chance or pure fate. But that is how I saw it then. I was so infallibly proud to be his child, to be his firstborn, to belong to him that it began to feel like an achievement. I would look at the thick binders of scripts he wrote long-hand and marvel at them. My father writes stories, I would think. What a wonderful thing to be -- a writer -- whose stories will live on and on. When I am grown, these binders will still be here, neatly placed on the mahogany shelves in his study, and I will come in casually carrying a handbag and wearing makeup and breezily pick up a binder, settle in his armchair, and begin to read. And I will find my father and his words on these pages. I will forever find him here. That's what I would think as a child. For some reason, I didn't associate the act of searching with finding him. Why would I be trying to search for him? Why would I be drawn to his work? But such sophistication was beyond me at that time. 

Every year until fourth grade, I won the class prize in "Urdu Reading." Oral recitation prizes were discontinued after fourth grade, or I am sure I would have continued to win. I don't speak from arrogance -- this is the simple truth and it has its roots in my reading habits. Even at that young age, I would creep into our drawing room where my father liked to write in those early days. I would pick up stacks of pages as he finished writing on them and I would read his neat penmanship, tight loops, slanting accents. If I didn't understand a word, I would catalog it to ask my mother later. I never disturbed my father during his fertile spells of writing. It never occurred to me to do so. Even back then, I recognized the act of creating stories on paper as sacred, like a form of worship. I miss those days with the clarity of retrospection -- it is a time capsule -- that man by the window, one leg crossed over the other, a sheaf of papers in front of him, a Uniball pen flying across the page, and that little girl next to him, silent but occupied, hanging on to the rise and fall of his Urdu script. In a moment, he will look up, he will stretch, he will ask, "Do you want to go get barbecue for dinner?" She will leap from the sofa. They will gather the rest of the family and drive off. And soon after, she will grow up, there will be vast distances between them, some surmountable, some not. I want to tap that girl on the shoulder with this new insight of adulthood. I want to beg her to know how special that time really is because of its sheer simplicity. She loves her father. He loves his child. In this instant, there is nothing between them but a few pages of a much longer story. I want to whisper into the man's ear, too, who is much closer to my age now than the little girl's. It won't remain so simple forever, I want to say. Time and people will slip from your grasp, hold on tight for as long as you can. He will shirk me away. He will tell me I am mad. How is it possible, he will say, for his family to scatter. Why, that's insane. Here's his little girl. His smart little girl who will go places, and her Papa will always be with her. 

I digress as usual -- like my father, I am partial to story-telling. Back to my theory. What if I wasn't born with this strong inclination to write? What if this became a defense mechanism out of a strong wish rather than natural aptitude? My theory goes like this: Remember that little girl who would retreat into the drawing room with her father and admire his work? Maybe that girl loved her father so deeply and admired his vocation so strongly that she molded herself to be like him. She told herself, I must be like my father who is the very best father in the world. I look like him, everyone says as much. I may as well be like him. And so one day, she picked up a pen and paper and went to her father and said, Papa, I want to write something. Tell me what I should write. And the man said, my darling girl, you could write anything and you would do it marvelously. But Papa, she said, what should I write? And the man said, my darling girl, your smile is like the sun, write about the sun then. And so the little girl sat next to her father, and started to write in English instead of Urdu:


Sun
I am eating a bun
under the sun.
The sun shines brightly 
I can't sit quietly. 
After some hours
the sun is very large. 
The sun is very hot, 
I touch it not. 
-From the archives of Noorulain Noor


And how the man laughed and laughed with joy and pride when the girl read out the poem to him. He ran to his wife with the piece of paper in his hand and read it to her. She looked at her daughter with wide eyes and a huge smile. Frame the poem, the man boomed to his wife. We shall frame it and put it in the drawing room. That same afternoon, the man drove his three girls to a bookstore and bought them as many books as they wanted. He bought a special notebook for his elder daughter. For the writer, he said, as he presented it to her. The poet, his wife corrected him. And that is how she came to be known forever after. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Who are you? Where have you come from?

Who are you? Where have you come form? We spend our whole lives crafting answers to these questions. We spend day after day after day defining who we are, we try to stay true to ourselves, we attempt to be mindful of our values when we conduct ourselves in society, in polite company. Who are you, we are trying to figure out. Some of us spend years laying down roots. Others expend time and effort to distance ourselves from our roots, rise above our origins, overcome circumstances, elevate our situation in life. 

I am reading Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread these days and there is a scene in the book where we hear these questions as a character's internal musing. "Who are you? Where have you come from?" It made me think. What answer do I have for these questions. The answer I have is very different from what my father must have or what my child will have in the future. I come from a father who crafted a place for himself in the world, who rose above his origins, who fought against the status quo, who gave to his children more than he ever had. I come from writers, from dreamers, from parents who are brilliant and creative and flawed and sentimental. I, too, have risen above my own roots. I have done my fair share of challenging the norms. And there is so much work still left to do. What will my daughter say to these questions, I wonder. Will she know what it took for us to get here, her and me together? Will she know the depth of longing that had to be overcome? Will she appreciate the force with which I cleaved myself to reality and shunned sentimentalism to get here, to be me, to make her? 



In the same book, there is a scene later on in which the family's two daughters are packing up the house and their belongings, a home with two generations of history. It is one of those brilliantly written scenes that will resonate with every audience. A few months ago, my parents sold the house I grew up in. 404, we called the house, referring to the number. In my dreams, I still walk in that kitchen, I still splash water on the epoxy floor of the garage and glide a squeegee across the wet surface, I still sit at the rickety old dining table and demand lunch impatiently, with the entitlement of a first-born. In the book, the two women talk about picture frames and pieces of furniture and china and old clothes. I wonder what I would have taken from 404 if I had had the opportunity. Maybe the plaque my father installed in the drawing room that said "A daughter is love." Maybe I would have taken a chair, an end table, and maybe in the end, nothing at all, only memories of all the years we spent there. Sometimes I wonder how my mother feels about leaving that house. Does she dream of the pitter-patter of little girls' feet running up to her, does she think of the roof-top that saw so many summer monsoons lash across its concrete floor and just as many winter chills? "Why do we accumulate so much when we leave it all behind," one character muses in the book. And I nod my head in agreement with her. We accumulate so much, maybe as a protest against the very fact that we will leave it all behind, an act of defiance. 

In the end, when I come back to the original question, I think of my roots. The roots my parents laid in that small house, 404, all those years ago. The roots that traveled with them to their new house without me. I can't not think of that house and those years when I try to compose an answer to these questions. Who are you? Where have you come from? I have come from the city of dreams, I think. From a small house in the mediocre part of town. From people who defied boundaries and limitations and showed their children how to dream. But I taught myself to make them real. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

A Celebration of Growth

When I was a teenager, I was convinced that I knew everything. I had no uncertainties. I was invincible. I knew what was right and what was wrong and what was right for me. I knew wholly what I wanted and how I was going to get it. When I was a teenager, I knew everything about myself and about the world. I was practically an adult. 

I am 3 months away from turning 30. The big three-oh. The life-changing event. The age that used to sound "so old" all those years ago. The age that has a whole episode of Friends devoted to it with Rachel Green lamenting her "plan" and being very poor company for her friends. The birthday that, more often than not, invokes sadness and fear. The age that brands you: "There you have it. You are an adult now whether you like it or not." I don't feel any of those things right now. Instead, I look at my teenage self and shake my head at her, "Foolish girl." The truth is, I am on the verge of turning 30 and I am still clueless. There is so much growing up to do yet.

It is disconcerting to realize that all of the most important decisions of my life, with the exception of choosing to have a child, were made while I was a teenager -- heady, opinionated, filled to the point of bursting with this sense of being true, being right, that damned righteousness that still trickles out of my mouth in unguarded moments. Surprisingly, those decisions have been fruitful, but that is likely just dumb luck rather than a testament to my foresight or wisdom. Exactly 2.5 weeks ago, I started a new job. After 6 years, I left Stanford and took a management position with a start-up. It was time to move on, and I love my new job -- this is called growing up. Earlier this year, I took on a bigger role at Papercuts. I transitioned to the role of Associate Editor from Poetry Editor -- an experience that has been challenging and enlightening -- so this is how much work and planning and work and planning and work and planning it takes to bring out a magazine -- this is also called growing up. I am in the midst of concluding a 10-week poetry course I was co-teaching for Desi Writers' Lounge. During the last few weeks, I had the privilege of witnessing the course participants stretch their wings, take chances, push themselves to produce impressive poems. I learned as I taught -- this is also called growing up. My girl is beginning to talk to me. In the morning, I wake her up, and she says, "Lie down, please! Sleepy time, please!" A scene reminiscent of my own childhood. I get ready for work and she says, "Pretty!" She wants to change several outfits a day because her clothes are "wet" or "yucky" or something else. My daughter is turning into a real person -- this is also called growing up. Today, I joined a gym -- dare I say it -- this is also, in fact, called growing up.

And all this is just the beginning. I feel I am at the cusp of something far greater than I realize. I am not fully able to absorb or observe this, but it is a truth I am beginning to live by:  Life is so fluid. Learning is on a spectrum that is infinite. How does one ever satiate one's appetite for learning? How does one ever reach the point of satisfaction where one finally feels grown up, accomplished, done? With all the uncertainties I am thriving under, at least I know the answer to this one question is never. The recipe for a fulfilled life is in continuing to find delight in small developments, in observing and experiencing personal growth constantly. 

So, I look back at my insolent fifteen-year-old self who believes she knows everything and say just to push her buttons, "I'll ask you again 15 years!"

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Dear Lahore

Dear Lahore, 

I come to you again after all poetry has dried up. I come to you empty-handed like I often appear on the prayer mat, pleading for something,I want desperately, wanting, wanting. I come to you because memory is crippled now, drowned out by the present and the vices that afflict me -- caffeine, Splenda. I have not seen you these many years and so much of life has filled these furlongs of time. 

I come to you because I don't really want to come to you anymore, and that is a mourning in and of itself. I come to you because you still hold so much of me. Somewhere in the past, your streets still feel my tread. I am walking alongside my father. We are buying street food, seekh kebab and cucumber salad, mint chutney and watered down yogurt from a vendor in Lakshmi Chowk. Now he's perched me on the bonnet of the car. Such pleasure it gives me to say "bonnet of the car." No one would understand it here, but you do. Now he tells me about his childhood, about honesty and struggle and passion and creativity. He tells me I am a brave girl. He tells me I can be anything or anyone when I grow up. He tells me I am already smarter than him. Such a rueful smile. Such truth in his eyes. 

Somewhere on your streets, my uncle walks late at night, the sky lit up with a shock of stars. His signature black boots make clickity clack noises. He enters the house I lived in. I hear his shoes, I see his face. He calls out to me. "Let's eat! I've brought you garam garam chargha!" (hot chicken roast) I prance off my bed. We take out plates and napkins but no silverware. We eat with our hands. He talks about his plans, his future uncertain but possibility knocking at his doorstep. Back then, we thought we could each be anything or anyone we wanted to be. 

Somewhere on your streets, three girls sit in the backseat of a lurid blue van. Backstreet Boys screech on the cassette player. They sit side by side engrossed in their own thoughts. They break the silence for an observation and then fall again into the comfort of their quiet companionship. At this moment, their thoughts are enough, but the sisters don't know that truly, each of them is quite enough to sustain the others. They will not know this for a long time and not until they have learned the meaning of distances. 

Dear Lahore, you hold so much of those days I am beginning to lose, the moments that didn't seem to matter, but actually were the ones that mattered most, the time capsules that held the essence of happiness without drama or action. Life happened outside of these moments, but resided inside the simplicities of such times. This time, this happiness, that girl, she lives on inside these glimpses of a different world, she exists on your street corners, and in the kitchen of an old house, and in the back of a van that was sold many years ago. 

I suppose I do not know what I am really afraid of -- finding her there when I return, or never finding her again. 

Time passes differently for you and me

"There was seldom anything addressed to her. Only an occasional letter from Manash. She resisted reading them, given what they reminded her of. Manash and Udayan, studying together in her grandparents' flat, and Udayan and Gauri getting to know one another as a result. A time she'd crushed between her fingertips, leaving no substance, only a protective residue on the skin."
- Jhumpa Lahiri in The Lowland

I felt this way once before when I took another journey with Jhumpa Lahiri. It was a different book, The Namesake, but I remember the landscape of this author's creativity, the topography of sentences, the valleys and deltas, the mountains and forests. This is a fertile place. Lahiri takes me back to my home -- so different from the home of Ashima in The Namesake, and certainly nowhere near The Lowland of Gauri's past -- and yet, I find myself reaching back into time, recognizing moments that were lost for so long that I had forgotten I even experienced them. This is what great writing does. 


The Lowland is not for the faint-hearted reader. It is not a kind book, but it is an important one. For a novel, it packs an expansive history lesson, a history that I, being on the other side of the border from India, never learned in textbooks and lectures. But more importantly, at its core, the novel was about time, particularly the past, a slice of time crystallized and settled into the realities of individuals affected by it. Time taking hold of lives and just not letting go. My father used to say to me, "The words that leave your tongue and the time that leaves your hand will never return." And he wouldn't warn me further than that. He wouldn't instruct me to use the time I had wisely or to hold my tongue. He would simply state a fact and leave the action up to me. I thought back to this statement of my father's that fell short of the technical definition of an advice, but governed so many of my decisions as an adult -- a life lesson, I call it still -- and I thought of it often while I read The Lowland. 

How much of our lives do we forget? How much do we remember? Two people who share a moment remember it differently, the quality of the moment changes for each individual, the feel of sun on skin, the sound of a heart beating loud enough to drown out all sound for one person and the same rhythm not even audible to another, the truth and its tributaries running different courses to irrigate the two lives -- it's all relative. And sometimes one person simply forgets or knows only half of the truth or a different version of it altogether. Then what? Who do you share your reality with then? You simply guard it within you. 

The Lowland compelled me to reach into the crevasses of memory and examine some caged realities that exist only for me now because they've been forgotten by everyone else. They are not so easily crushed for me, they roll between my fingertips like cool marble, grave, unyielding, ever present.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Life Lessons for Jahanara

A few months ago, I started a notebook with random things I wanted to tell my daughter. I was consumed with this need to write lessons and instructions down for her in case something happens to me. I suppose this need also arose from the knowledge that I was privy to my mother's journals when I was living at home. Years ago, I read the entries she wrote just before my birth in which she detailed her anxieties and fears. She had learned she was going to have a C-section. It was her first pregnancy and my father had gone to England for work. I had heard the stories of what happened after my birth. My father came home with suitcases full of toys and clothes and little baby booties in every color. But my mother had never told me about the days preceding my birth, during which she felt utterly alone and paranoid. What astounded me was how much she loved her child before she even came into this world, and that's how she referred to me - my child - because there was no way for her to know back then in Lahore, Pakistan, whether her baby was a girl or boy.

I felt no such affection towards my unborn child. We bonded after she was born, after a long, hard labor, after I saw both harshness and gentleness in nurses, after I went several days without sleep, crying quietly in the bathroom for my own mother. And so, I was not impelled to write love notes to my child before she came into this world. When I wrote this particular letter to my daughter, the only one so far in this notebook, I probably didn't intend it to be a list of lessons and instructions. In retrospect, it reads like a litany of entreaties, do this, do that, things I have and haven't done in my own life that I would like my daughter to do. I am posting it here now, because I have distanced myself from it enough. It can go out in the world. She will find it eventually - but first she will hear all of this from me directly (I hope). Plus, the letter begins with a cliche that makes me cringe, but there is no other way of encompassing this feeling.

My dearest Jahanara,

I love you so much that it hurts. Since you have come into my life, my heart has grown so big. You are such a beautiful child with your fluffy ringlets and your chubby cheeks.

You will always be beautiful. Believe that.

Be honest even if it scares you. If you are honest, you have nothing to hide. Hiding from the world is very difficult, so stay honest.

Read a lot. Books will teach you many things about the world, but they will also teach you a lot about yourself.

Be kind. It is very easy to be cruel, but resist the temptation. Be kind to people and be generous with money, compliments, and possessions.

Be respectful of your elders.

Study hard even if you don't feel like it. I know learning can be boring, but do it anyway. You will be at a huge advantage if you do and a much bigger disadvantage if you don't.

Drink milk!

Take your vitamins!

Do what YOU want to do, do what will make you happy.

Fall in love. It is the most wonderful and the most ephemeral feeling you will experience. Do it whole-heartedly.

Your best colors are pink, yellow, and white, but wear what you love.

Eat healthy foods and pick up an activity: running, hiking, yoga, dance, anything.

Listen to music.

Be wise with money.

Read Harry Potter.

Learn how to swim.

If someone hurts you, try to distance yourself from them without wishing them ill.

Go to college!

Don't ever smoke.

Never do something because others are doing it. You are smart, confident, beautiful, and beloved. You don't need anyone's approval but your own.

Know that your Baba and I love you and you can share anything you want with us - our family is your safe space. 

You will make mistakes. We all do. Own them. Apologize sincerely. Learn from them.

Think a lot. Generate ideas. Execute them to perfection - perfection as you see it, not some prescribed idea of it.

Bake. It's good for the soul.

Think about Mummy from time to time and when you do, believe that you are the dearest thing to me.

Make your marriage a platform of partnership, not one of control or competition.

If possible, go to Lahore in the summer and the winter. I remember it as a beautiful city.

Travel.

Learn another language.

Love fiercely and without reservation or expectation.

Be firm about your beliefs, needs, and demands.

Always stand your ground and stand up for your truth and for what you believe in.

 Photo by Rebecca McCue

I Can Only Be My Best Self

These days I find myself wishing to be the woman who writes this blog, not just when I sit in front of my computer but all the time. Her life is pretty good. She is a poet and a clinical researcher. She has an adorable toddler. She has a lovely house on a hill and the ability to watch sunrise caressing the winding trails and roads sprawled below her. She has the luxury to write about things lost and forgotten from a safe distance. There are a few people who like what she writes. Every day, she is able to get at least two uninterrupted hours of listening to audiobooks. She is poised to do bigger and better things. She is so positive in her writing. She talks about seizing the day and bottling up happiness and loving her naughty toddler. She talks about cooking and loving. Her life is pretty good from this vantage point. Pretty damn good. And I want to have her life all the time rather than  during the single hour it takes me to write and proofread a blog post. 


 Yesterday, in a small group of smart and sensitive women that constitute the Desi Writers' Lounge Bay Area Readers' Club, we talked about The Goldfinch. I insisted that several characters in the book probably had personality disorders. Sahar Ghazi, an extremely perceptive member of the group and a dear friend, challenged me on this notion. "Why do you think they have personality disorders," Sahar asked. "We are learning about them only through the main character's perspective. Maybe they are completely normal and going through life on a pretense. Maybe they are not opening up their true selves in front of him. People live their life pretending sometimes," I am paraphrasing, but that is the general arc of Sahar's view. I think I presented a different  and opposing argument, something feeble and completely petulant like, "But I don't pretend. And who pretends? How can they do that?" Puerile - to say the least. 

The fact is, everyone pretends to some degree. Yes, this is the space where I come to be honest with myself, call myself on things that I did wrong, and talk about how wronged I have felt in the past due to other people's insensitivity. But honesty has degrees, too. It has layers and components. Often people reveal part of a fact and it is up to the reader to brush off the sand occluding their vision from this partial truth, and like an archeologist, try to determine what the whole story is. Think about it. We do it all the time. The missing pieces are sometimes inherently present in what is revealed - the tone of voice, the choice of words, the tangent of the neck, the slope of shoulders, the audible sighs, the wistful eyes. The bright smile that is plastered on one's face as a confirmation of happiness has nothing on all these other overbearing signs, and some poor folks are just completely transparent - I am beginning to think I may be one of them. 

I guess what I am trying to get at in a very roundabout way is that we often think our best self is our happiest self. That is not necessarily true. I am a poet - my writing is dependent upon being miserable. The poems I write when I am happy do not resonate with me and probably not with my readers. I need superficial tragedies, arguments, disagreements, hurt feelings, a sense of being wronged in order to create work that has even a whisper of being placed at a lit mag. And though most of the time I bring my cheerful positive self to this blog (and I will not be surprised if you all stand up and say, "But Noor, you are a morose writer and you don't bring your cheerful self to this blog"), that is not my "normal" self. When I write in this space, I emulate the woman I want to be - the one who stands in her balcony every morning watching the sun bleed into the sky, the one who feels a sense of utter and profound contentment, the one who writes about life's little matters because, after all, those are the matters that matter. I wouldn't say that it is an entirely inaccurate depiction of myself, but it is certainly an extension of my character. 

You'll forgive me, of course, for this pretense, won't you? I am a poet who likes to experiment with identity and belonging. This is a natural result of that, you see. In any case, I wrote very honestly just now, and so I must extend my hand towards you in salutation. Hi! Good to meet you today!

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Until We Meet Again, Mrs. Khan!

Something happened before I reached Mrs. Khan's 7C class on the "senior side" of the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Lahore, with classrooms situated on the third floor of the school overlooking the front facing hallways and parking areas, one set of doors opening into the vast porticos and verandas. All I remember is that by the time I reached Mrs. Khan's class, I had mastered a dichotomous personality. In school, I was shy - some may have gone to the extent of calling me diffident. At home, I was a boisterous older sister - belligerent even.

I missed the first day of seventh grade. When I arrived on the second day, a dark Fall morning of 1995 with ominous gray clouds completely hiding the sun and dense droplets of rain battering my small umbrella, the classroom was swathed in sepia, a combination of the white overhead lights, the pale yellow walls, the polished wooden desks and the dusky sky outside. I took a seat quietly towards the front of the room. I was one of the shortest girls in the class, and by the time I reached seventh grade, I knew how seating charts worked at the Convent, how line formations were arranged during morning assembly and after lunch break, how we were supposed to file out of and into the classroom - shortest girl in the front, tallest in the back. I was usually in the first or second row.

On this day, I was anxious. There were some new faces in the class. Some of my closest friends had been shuffled to a different section. My thoughts had a singular focus: How strict was this new teacher going to be? I remember giving myself a pep talk, "Just raise your hand. Answer questions. Speak up." Over the last two years, as I had become progressively quiet in classes to the point of being laconic, I had also noticed a change in how I was perceived. The widespread impression used to be  that if a student didn't participate in class, she was not studious or intelligent. This opinion flowed freely among teachers and distilled down to students. There was no place for introspection at the Convent in those years. Cliques formed based on popularity. Little girls were ruthless in the playground and in school activities. Comparison and competition were handy tools in every parent's conversational toolkit. 

Sitting among my classmates in those few minutes before meeting my new teacher, I thought about the project I worked on in the previous school year. The class was divided into 6 groups. Each student group leader was supposed to select five or six members from the class. I was among the last few to be selected. With each leader calling out a name and the girl bounding happily towards her group, I felt anxiety and humiliation rising inside me. "Just because I am quiet," I scolded myself. "They don't want me in their group because they think I am stupid." What other reason could there be? If they had seen my report cards, they would  have known how good my marks were. Finally, mercifully, one of the group leaders called my name. She looked at me doubtfully, one perfect eyebrow arched, her smooth forehead furrowed in a frown. After the selection was over, three girls from my group cornered me and said, "We have chosen you, but you better work hard."

Rain continued to splatter all over the concrete hallways outside Mrs. Khan's classroom as I waited for her to arrive and pleaded with myself to come out of my cocoon. Mrs. Khan walked in the door, smoothing her curly shoulder length hair behind her ears, wearing maroon lipstick, belting out a cheerful "Good morning," in her soothing contralto voice. We shot up from our seats and sang out "Good morning, Miss." She proceeded to call out the names of her students to record attendance. When she got to my name, I said in my shy school voice, "Present, Miss." "There you are," she said looking at me and smiling. "You're finally here. Noor-ul-Ain Noor," she read from her register (that's how I spelled my name back then). "Noor-ul-Ain Noor," she repeated. "N, A, N. NAN! You're NAN! I love naan!" From that day forward, to Mrs. Khan, I was NAN, and to me, she was the woman who changed the way I saw myself and made me realize that I should probably care less about how others perceived me. This doesn't mean that I didn't continue to encounter negative experiences that most schoolgirls do, but I knew how to recover from the really bad ones. You just keep moving on, because you know that there are people like Mrs. Khan who believe in you.

It was a remarkable school year for me. Mrs. Khan taught us English language and literature. I poured myself into the texts we were studying. I read Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess in the first two weeks of school. I raised my hand whenever Mrs. Khan asked a question in class. Most weekends, I accompanied my family to our farmhouse. I remember lounging in a makeshift hammock under an ancient banyan tree, and working on an assignment for Mrs. Khan. It was to summarize a few chapters of A Little Princess. When I got my notebook back, I opened it to find compliments from her in the margins, "Excellent! Good! What an improvement!" I worked harder than ever before, and under her praise and guidance, I blossomed.

In the middle of the school year, Mrs. Khan announced an English language test. The test would include an essay and some grammar exercises. By this time, I had received plenty of praise for my writing from Mrs. Khan. She had given me meaningful comments on the work I had submitted. She had noticed my sentence structure, my story-telling. She had told me it was "very good." For the first time, I began to feel that what I had to say was important, what I had to say may resonate with someone. This was not like other subjects. This was not like an A in Biology, for which I had studied for hours and memorized the process of photosynthesis just as it was written in the textbook. This was something I was creating. I was putting myself into those essays, formulating a voice, an opinion, a style - and it was being read and appreciated.

That year, Mrs. Khan was single-handedly responsible for altering my perception of myself. I was still quiet in my classes, but I was learning to hold my pen confidently and tell a story with it. When I started working on the English language test, I was a different person - I was the character in the story I was writing. The topic was "A Fire." Those days, we were hearing about violence in Karachi, just as we hear about it now. Fires breaking out, bombs in marketplaces, scores dead in sectarian violence, or in poorly contained battles between warring political parties. In my story, I was not NAN. I was a girl in Karachi who went shopping before Eid festivities with her cousin and best friend, Saliha. In the marketplace, there was a blast followed by a fire, and Saliha perished in the flames. The conclusion of the story portrayed the grief of this child, the scorched clothes that would never be worn on Eid day, broken bangles littering the street - rather morbid for an 11-year-old to write, but it was the reality I saw every day in the news.

When Mrs. Khan passed the test papers back to us, I saw something that heartened me. "28/30 EXCELLENT!" She told us how well we had all done in the test, and followed this with an account of the story that had touched her deeply, made her cry. It was the best submission in the class, written by NAN. By me. I was best in class. I felt rather than saw curious and shocked faces of my classmates staring at me. I remember not knowing what to do with my own face. Should I smile? Should I remain serious? I settled for looking right at my teacher, the teacher who had inspired me to actually write that story to begin with. She beamed at me. "Well done!" Immediately, girls started asking me to pass my story to them so they could read it. I obliged - stunned, humbled, excited, happy, but most of all, grateful to this miracle of a woman, who probably never knew what a monumental positive force she had been in my life during that year.

Today, 18 years later, I still have that essay in my book of memories. Next to it I have a certificate recognizing my excellence in English Literature awarded to me by Mrs. Khan. These items have traveled with me from Lahore all the way to California. I have looked at them before every major academic event in my life. In my senior year of college, after pulling an all-nighter to study for the upcoming final of Eukaryotic Genetics, I opened up my book of memories and found that the story, written in fountain pen, had washed away, but Mrs. Khan's writing in red ball-point ink was still present. I breathed in looking at the essay, remembering that difficult time, the girl I was. I can take this final, no problem, I thought. Back then, my scornful classmates used to roll their eyes and warn me that I "better work hard." Now, my college friends playfully called me "the bitch who kills the curve with a 100% every time." I had come a long way from that lonely place, but my journey had begun with Mrs. Khan, with her kindness and her warmth, her compassionate eyes, her wide easy grin, her perfectly clipped nails, her fingers poised over notebooks with a red pen, and her comments on my work that elevated me in my own eyes.

Mrs. Khan passed away suddenly a few hours ago. I found out through the Facebook page for the Association of Ex Convent Students. From the shock and sorrow expressed by many young women on Facebook, I can tell that I was just one girl, one insignificant link in Mrs. Khan's epic story. There are hundreds of girls like me. There are more of us who don't fit inside a traditional mold than ones that do. We carry within us a plethora of stories. We may be shy or introverted. We may have witnessed our parents worrying about money. We may be the way we are because of other, more serious or sinister reasons. Abuse. Low self-esteem. Learning disabilities. Broken families. Mrs. Khan was among those rare educators who implicitly and readily recognize that there is diversity among their students. One size does not fit all. She knew it, and it came naturally to her. She listened to what her girls were saying to her. I could see it in the way she cocked her head to one side upon hearing a question, in the way she smoothed her hand over her hair, tucked a stray lock behind her ear, and said in that deep honey-dipped voice, "Now...", carefully weighing each word, looking right at the small face with the small voice, letting her know that her question was important, valuable, meaningful. Mrs. Khan will live on in the countless lives she touched and changed for the better.

My last meeting with Mrs. Khan was in August 2000, on the day I received my O-level result, which was absolutely average. My studying habits had lapsed considerably in my last year of school, and that was reflected in my meager 3 As. I don't know what came over me, but I went straight from school to Mrs. Khan's house and turned up unannounced at her doorstep. She opened the door and looked at me with concern in her eyes. "I have it," I said. "I have the result. It's not good. Only 3 As." She paused and took this in. "An A in English?" she asked me. "Yes," I said incredulously like she had insulted me. "Yes, of course I have an A in English." Her face broke into a grin. "Come here, NAN!" And she wrapped me into her arms.

Mrs. Khan's photograph copied from the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Lahore blog.

Photos of the school campus copied from the CJM ACES Facebook Group.