Young Writers Society

It has stopped snowing. There’s a movie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes playing on the television, but my mind is somewhere else. I can’t even remember who turned the TV on in the first place. Maybe it was me, maybe not. My restlessness gets the best of me: I get up and spend a good fifteen minutes walking up and down the staircases, up to the third floor to my room and the adjoining rooms, examining each corner and crevice, poring over the floorboards. I take a look at the ceilings, the shelves, the corridor walls as if looking for signs of damage, but find nothing noticeable. So, I climb out into the lawn through an open window on the first floor.

It’s cold outside, and… bright. Everything seems to glow in the snow covering it. The sky is having a breather and the foot-thick snow seems to have silenced everything. There are a little cat’s paw prints in the snow nearby, they start near a wall and go along the side of the house towards the back garden. The peach tree frees its branches from the bits of snow weighing down on them every now and then, like an old man getting dust off his shoulders.

I walk along the tiled path surrounding the house, trying to stay beneath the eaves as clumps of snow slip off the roof and hit the ground below with a thud and a hiss. I find myself wanting to see the cracks again, as if actually staring into the extent of the damage, feeling it with my fingers will somehow ease the terror that my imagination of it is causing me. But it doesn’t help.

There they are- wide cracks with no pattern, about an inch wide. Wide enough for my hand to go into them till the knuckles, and deep enough to have caused this part of the house to tilt into the earth ever so slightly. They run along the hard rocky foundation, like a cobweb of fractures, continuing into the adjoining tiles.

One day, back when I was thirteen, I had found some old, half used containers of blue and green paint somewhere, and having grabbed a large paintbrush, I had painted my name in bold letters on this wall- the one in front of me. Pa had been very angry when he saw it, he had scolded me because I had ruined the paint, but had vented his anger by taking a day off from work the next day and repainting it back to normal.

I climb back in through the window and examine the portion of the room just above the cracks, from the inside. That is when I notice something that I hadn’t seen earlier- the floor looks a bit sloped, as if half of it has receded into the earth while the other half has stayed in place. There is no other conclusion, or so it seems to me: the soil beneath the rocks must’ve softened during the floods, causing a part of the foundation to retreat into the earth.

I have a slight headache and its cold here because of the open windows and uncovered floors, so go back upstairs, and pour myself some coffee. It helps.

I am halfway through reading this month’s issue of Physiotherapy Today online when I hear knocking on the front door downstairs. I get up to check who it is.

The floodwater seems to have caused some considerable damage to the door-hinges, it seems, because the door doesn’t open when I first pull on it. A second, forceful pull makes it open with a loud sound- which is a bit of a thud, a bit of a squeak, the sound of warped wood struggling for freedom against warped wood, accompanied by a sharp metallic cry of rusty, reluctant hinges.

Niaz is standing outside, with a car-key in his hand, still in his work clothes. Beside him is a boy, his son.

Shahid.

He is twelve years old, but smiles at me like a grown-up, like someone who’s seen the world, and has somehow had some of the childishness in him replaced with experience of some sort. He walks up to me and offers me a handshake.

“Hey, Uncle.”

“Hey.” I pull him into a hug. He’s grown taller.

For an average uncle and nephew relationship, we haven’t even spent that much time together. I get to see him only after a gap of two or three years when I come home. But he just keeps on smiling at me as if we’ve been friends for years. Which makes me feel strange about myself, for not having the involuntary feeling to reciprocate his smile with a smile as genuine.

He even resembles me a little.

“It’s good you brought him along.” I say to Niaz, who seems to be in no hurry to come in.

“Yeah, he was eager to meet you. He thinks you’re fun.”

“Well, yeah, I am fun.” I ruffle Shahid’s hair playfully, which, by the look on his face, he doesn’t like.

“Oh, come on in, Ma just left for her friend’s, we have the house all to ourselves.”

We go up to the makeshift living room. The television is still on and Sherlock and Watson are having a serious conversation about some secret league.

“Where did they go in all this snow? The roads are so slippery.” Niaz says, taking a kanger in his hands, still not sitting down. “Has it ever snowed in March before?”

“Not that I know of.” I turn towards Shahid, who’s looking at the photos put up on the shelf. “Hey, buddy, how’s school going?”

“So so.”

Niaz sits down in front of me.

“Haalaat aes kharaab, there were protests in the old city so I took the other route. Shahid wanted to go up to Pari Mahal today, and you wanted to talk about the house and I didn’t know who to listen to.” he with a shrug. “So, what do we do now?”

“Pari Mahal? In this weather?” I say, looking questioningly at Shahid, who looks back at me with a look that says why not?

“Well, no harm in that, I guess a little trip would clear my head up a bit.” I say, still weighing the idea of a trip.

What I could really use right now, though, is a plain, rational conversation about what to do about the house. I look at Niaz and he doesn’t look as worried as me. He sits there, slouched, creases in his shirt, his hands placed on the kanger perched on his lap. His fingers tapping at the wicker handles with little ink marks on them, they look like they spend the day typing away at keys, writing into ledgers, stamping documents for people and writing entries into notebooks. My eyes shift from his hands to his face, and there’s a look of thoughtfulness on it as he looks around at the walls of the room.

“It’s strange.” He says to me, then pauses abruptly.

I have no idea what he means but I’m glad he started the conversation.

“I feel more at home here than I do at my own place.” He continues. “You know, I read this novel not so long ago… it wasn’t that good actually, but what I liked about it the most is an idea that the writer talks about… this one idea… he talks about the power of memories, and how we attach these memories to things, to people and places, and that the sentimental value of a thing is in the memories it invokes in us. Without memories, every object would just be a hollow lump of matter, with little emotional value, if any at all.”

With a rapid movement of his eyebrows, he breaks out of his reverie and glances at the television.

I look for context in his words and don’t see any.

“Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I say, plainly.

He shakes his head, smiles.

“Look at it this way: you say you’re worried about the house, but are you really? Or are you worried about the memories attached to it? The house or the memories?”

Shahid sits down beside Niaz and changes the channel to local news.

“I hear you, really, I do. But what I wanted to talk to you about is not some deep interpretation of the situation but rather what can be done to save this house. Yes, when I say house, I mean the memories too. Of course, the memories too. I mean, we were born here for heaven’s sake. I rode my first bicycle in that lawn outside, and sometimes I would play cricket against that wall outside, the one that has those big cracks right now. Remember that time we used this staircase railing as a slide till our… till our balls hurt?”

Shahid chuckles. “Whoa, whoa… those are some painful memories.”

The sound of pro-freedom slogans on the local news diverts us from our conversation for a while. It is about a teenager killed in police firing on protesters in the old city. There’s a low-quality video clip playing, it shows people pelting stones at a police vehicle amid the falling snow, on one side of a road, and the police firing teargas shells and bullets directly at them. The headline: ANTI-NATIONAL SLOGANS RAISED, ONE KILLED. All capitals.

“This guy was from our school.” Says Shahid, no shock or anything in his voice.

“Oh.” Mouths Niaz.

The clip repeats over and over again. Some ‘political expert’ is speaking over a webcam about his concern for ‘the misguided young generation.’ Then there’s a short advertisement break.

“So that’s why the police had blocked the road to the old city.” Niaz shakes his head.

“Will there be another 2010, then?” He continues, handing me the kanger. “Just change the channel, dilei sardaan, it’s disappointing.”

Shahid turns off the television. The room is quiet once again. I’m still thinking about the news

“This…” I point to the now black television screen. “… is why I left while I could… this strife and uncertainty. It suffocated me.”

“Ever the escapist.” Adds Niaz.

I stop my narration there, realizing that maybe he isn’t interested in my reasons and choices. He doesn’t continue the conversation. I adjust a stray ember in the kanger with my finger, burning it a little.

Shahid pours tea from a kettle on the table into three cups and each of us grabs one.

“Do you have any books here?” Shahid asks me.

“Yeah. There’s a bookshelf upstairs, although I’m not sure what books I have in there. They’re pretty old.”

“Old is fine.” He says and heads upstairs, sipping tea.

I recline back on the sofa.

“Did you talk to that engineer you were telling me about.” I ask Niaz.

“Yeah, that’s what I came to tell you about… I did talk to him.” He pauses to take a quick sip and then continues speaking.

“He’s a busy guy, after the flood, he got even busier with reconstruction work all over the Valley. He said he had to check it himself to say anything with certainty, but I showed him some photographs of the cracks and the house and he said that from the look of it, we have a fifty-fifty chance.”

“A fifty-fifty chance?” I ask, confused.

“A part of the house may collapse, or it may not. We can take our chances, let the cracks be, and hope it doesn’t flood again or we can repair the foundation, you know- the part that’s damaged.”

How do you repair the foundation without bringing down everything founded upon it?

“And what do you think we should do?” I ask.

He pouts. “I think that taking our chances is the better option. If the house was damaged enough to collapse, it would’ve collapsed by now. Why are you asking though? Don’t tell me that you have some big reconstruction plans.”

I don’t like the idea of something ‘collapsing’. I imagine Pa and Ma. I shake my head in irritation.

“We can’t ‘take our chances’, what does that even mean Niaz? You know what? You sound like Pa. What has happened to you people? Earlier he was saying something about ‘being tired’. Now maybe I understand his situation, maybe the old man has lost his willpower now, maybe it’s hard for him to start over in his mid-fifties. But you? I didn’t expect the same from you. You don’t even care, do you?”

He looks at me without blinking, the tip of his tongue pressed against the corner of his mouth. His eyes look… different.

“And since when did you start ‘caring’? That’s news to me.” He says, slowly.

I look back at him, without blinking. There's a piercing silence in the room, the silence after an explosion.

“Where were you all these years?”

We continue to look at each other.

“And how can you talk to me like that? How can you even imagine that all this doesn’t affect me? Do you think you're only person capable of sensing and feeling? Do you think you’re special? Huh?”

He undoes a few buttons on his shirt and looks away. I look down at the table, breaking our eye contact.

“I didn’t mean that.” I manage to say. Keeping my voice low, and realizing that I had been shouting at him all this time.

“I’m sorry, I talk rather loudly sometimes.” I put down the teacup and look at him.

There are dark circles near his eyes, subtle, but visible. I hadn’t noticed them earlier.

“I know you’ve been looking after them, Niaz. I mean, floods or no floods, I wasn’t even there for them most of the times. You were and I wasn’t.”

I take a deep breath and continue.

“Maybe my two days of staying here have, all of a sudden, awakened me to the realities here. Maybe I’m a little angry at myself, maybe that’s why I’m angry at everybody.”

He looks down at his hands.

“But my concern isn’t a mere act of pretense either, maybe I am away for years altogether, but that’s my life now. I don’t live here anymore. Maybe you think that I’ve forgotten all of you, but I haven't. I can't.”

Niaz looks at me. The look in his eyes is that of belief and disbelief clawing at each other.

“I’ll be leaving soon, maybe I’ll get an extension for my leave, maybe not. But I won’t leave until I’m sure that Pa and Ma are safe.”

Niaz nods at me. He looks relaxed now.

“I know. I didn’t mean to talk to you like that. It’s just that, I am not of much help. Things haven’t been well between Shazia and I. We… well… ah, forget it. Just know that I didn’t mean to talk to you like that. I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong with Shazia and you?”

He shakes his head.

“Tell me.”