Out of the Eater

My flight back to the mountains didn't quite make it. The pilot tilted a wing and swung round back to Islamabad. He took one look at the clouds and wanted to go home. He announced their height in numbers meaningless in their magnitude but when I saw, I sympathised. Up there the the line between mountains and meteorology is blurred where solids are etherial, and out of the ether, walls block the way. The other suspension that makes flight possible is that of disbelief. I am willing, it'll get me home.

So I am holed up in a hotel with a carpet on the wall and a doorway in the shower. I could do with company and although there's a talkative type, from the part-of-the-furniture school of service, I'm wanting to hear more than his litany of 'hello-please-thank-you-ma'am-welcome-please', repeated often, with pride, in person and telephonically. He hopes I'll tip as Dickens was paid, by the word, but I'm no philanthropist and I leave him empty handed and strangely lost for words. Not me: 'Thank-you, Uriah, good-bye, good night, allah hafiz and inshallah never again.'

The plane makes it on day two. I arrive to sand dunes glistening in the light on the one hand and flora and fauna being fruitful and multiplying, each according to its kind, on the other. But once I've swept and bleached, the house is inhabitable again and I'm able to venture outside and enjoy the last of the lilies, just blossoming when I left, and the first of the figs. I eat them standing on the chair I pick them on, as the race to get them before the birds gives the operation a sense of urgency. I step into the school and a schoolful of children turns its collective head and hurtles towards me. Balls are left to bounce to a standstill, 'it' gives up the chase, climbers descend from apricot trees; buckets and spades, once so highly sought are abandoned; a hundred hands are outstretched. I must shake them all. A hundred good mornings later and I am hoarse. I am happy, home at last.

WALCOME BACK MISS!!! it says on the blackboard, making me glad I am their maths, not spelling, teacher. I've been led back to the year 5 classroom in my break, after fervent whispering through division. This class, who I harangue and detain, are throwing me a party. On a grubby desk 15 tiny lunch boxes are offered as oblations. I have a chip, a crisp, a bite of sandwich, of samosa, of kebab. I take namkeen and tear a bit off a fried egg. There's a biscuit and some cake. My cup runneth over.
Men are hunting and girls are gathering. By neighbours I'm given apricots and their kernels, mangoes, plums and roses. One lodges a lump of venison in my fridge, as he has none, and invites me to enjoy some. I've had lentils for lunch and tea so one hungry night I hack a piece off, pound ginger, fry it up and cure my anaemia.
The crown prince of a nearby valley is coming to dine with some dear friends. In his honour, rare 'blue sheep' is served - no woolly pastoral breed here but a hardy beast of the mountains. It's so dark it looks like it's burnt to a cinder but it is as much like blueberries as it's possible for meat to be, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
I am warmly welcomed back into the ecosystem: out of the eater, something to eat. My knees are nibbled, my ankles are attacked and my scalp is someone succour. I am being poured out. They make their home on my head, but there's no WALCOME here, just NIDAX! (something from the chemist.) I scour and scrub, beat bedding and sun it, burn smoke offensive to the six-legged and comb with aggression. We all groan together, as was promised for the time being.

But I've decided not going to fight this battle alone. I enlist help. I'll take care of the home front - kitchen and carpets, floors and furnishings - but the battle of the bedding and endless fabric that makes up our clothing someone else has to handle.
The first dhobi I approach doesn't do women's clothes, so to speak. I don't blame him, neither do I as of now. But I finally find my comrade standing at the window wielding his iron, so big it might explain the the occasional power outages we have as a city. His shop is more library than laundry, men's drab kameezes neatly referenced according to the dewy decimal system of washermen. You check them out to wear and return them for a wash. I know my clothes will be safe with him, but the bugs won't stand a chance. A powerful smell of clean billows from behind the back curtain. 'Will you help me...?' I begin.
A week later and trousers I'd begun to hope were meant to be crinkled are knife-edged. Kameezes stand to attention, dupattas unfold into a neat square pattern that makes teaching 3-D shapes a pleasure.

Battle-weary, I get the news. My phone rings just as a school parent stops his car and winds down his window to inform me, and tell me to go home. 'Pakistan has won'.
'What?' I should have known. The World Cup. Cricket.
I do a u-turn and join the throng of children who've also been dismissed as a national holiday is declared. I just check, for the record, that they know why, after a school girl in a neighbouring country thought she was off on Good Friday because it was someone's (not too sure whose) birthday, 'kisi ka happy burday hoga' as she put it, bored of the births of so many great men and gods. Although some know, many others simply pump the air and cry 'Happy Birthday!' in celebration of such a display of, this time sportsmanlike, strength.
And out of the strong, something sweet: Happy Rest Day.