I had a knock on my gate the other morning. Please could I go and give condolences to the family whose son died of a drug overdose yesterday?
The helicopters look as big, up there, as the cockroaches who stormed my house one night, copulated and colonised. I clear the counter to make dinner and who have we here? Somebody snacking. I look up from reading a novel and -hullo- who's that having sex on the carpet? Some stop embarrassed in the night when the lights go on, caught creeping round the skirting board en route to other such liaisons. One dirty beast even had designs on me and on a candlelit evening wormed his way into my shirt.
But this little old spinster will not have it. She will not. There is a powder in the shops whose name sounds like death in every language I know of: mortein. But the criminal creatures do not know those languages, can not heed the warning. They step upon it and oh, how lovely it must be, they realise for the first time in their crawling little lives, to lie back and rest awhile. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest- and it is worse than poverty that comes upon them like a bandit.
Because that, friends, is how I find them when I flick on the light the next morning. They are mortified to be caught with their soft underbellies exposed. They try to flip back and slip away. Their feet, so sticky they can walk upside down, do not know air, that it offers no purchase. So they spend their final moments in a tantrum. Then their six kicking feet meet my one foot and our days have begun with death.
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High up in Hunza there is a lake, a sheet of shine between two craggy mountains with the tops of fruit trees growing out of it. In spring, submerged branches blossomed under water, vainly hoping bees would dive down and collect its pollen. And now, small water-logged fruits form for no one to farm, for the farmers have fled with their families and are staying in tents. Their homes are beneath those trees, beneath that shining surface that has risen higher and higher through spring as the river flowed and swelled with melting snow as it has always done. But there is a wall now, a whole new mountain in fact, that fell from another into the Indus. And so the river stops and waits till miles of it upstream rise higher than the mountain till it can once again be on its way.
A mountain of uncertainty has blocked the future. Everyone waits to see what the water will do, what the mountain will do. Still for centuries and constant in its flow respectively, rock and river push their tonnes against each other and eye-watering pressures build. Release will be so violent it will almost register on the Richter scale. 'The next 24 hours are critical,' the experts say. 'The next 24 hours,' they repeat, night after night.
But while the camera crews of the nations encircle the arena, just as the lake is level with the mountain, a small stream starts trickling over the ledge and winds its way down past boulders to the place the river once flowed. It's quite hard to make it out on the TV screen and so the story is replaced with storms in the capital and Karachi, political and meteorological. The next 24 hours will be critical.
A mountain of uncertainty has blocked the future. Everyone waits to see what the water will do, what the mountain will do. Still for centuries and constant in its flow respectively, rock and river push their tonnes against each other and eye-watering pressures build. Release will be so violent it will almost register on the Richter scale. 'The next 24 hours are critical,' the experts say. 'The next 24 hours,' they repeat, night after night.
But while the camera crews of the nations encircle the arena, just as the lake is level with the mountain, a small stream starts trickling over the ledge and winds its way down past boulders to the place the river once flowed. It's quite hard to make it out on the TV screen and so the story is replaced with storms in the capital and Karachi, political and meteorological. The next 24 hours will be critical.
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It rained hard one night and water flooded some classrooms, having gushed down the chimneys. The cleaning lady found a soggy dead kitten in a corner and left it out with the rubbish. It was fascinating to the children how like a rat it was and how parts moved if poked just so. They tried sticks, shoes and fingers. (You go and wash your hands, sunshine, then come and show me. I need to smell the soap.) It moved and moved until it came alive again. The guard took of his jacket and build it a house. That day he did double duty guarding the gate and the the kitten's life, alert to signs of danger and disease.
I have since heard that it has made an officer's daughter a wonderful pet.
I have since heard that it has made an officer's daughter a wonderful pet.
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I have waited outside our office so many times: waited for meetings, waited for the postman, waited to go home. I find myself here again today, waiting, pacing. Then I am asked to sit down and talk. I face the mountains and we stare at each other blankly. I am told that due to circumstances we might have to leave any day now.
The month I envisaged dragging by is suddenly concentrated into a few days. I see what I am about to leave. Space intensifies with time and crystallises about me like a jewel. The next 24 hours could be critical. There is so much beauty that there is almost too much, as if about to swell and burst, overripe. There are flowers on the tree, red; there are flowers in the beds, pink; there's a bird's egg on the grass, blue; there are apricots on the tree, yellow. I'm not hungry but I go down to pick the fruit we've waited for all year. We watched as their blossom welcomed back spring and quickly fell. We watched the leaves bud and unfold and told off children for plucking their hard little knots of green fruit for weaponry. We've watched them soften and grow and today they are blushing. I eat a few but leave many more for seasons I will not see here. Friends will feast on them, slice and dry them, tire of them fresh and survive winter on them dry till those children, a year older, will climb again for their sour taste of a new year.
There's a hoopoe on the grass who appears to be two-faced, so beak-like is his pointed plume at the back. He's looking forwards and backwards; east and west; past and future.
The walnut tree is still preparing its nuts. I am surrounded by it, so stately, starting from its smooth white trunk and extending to dark boughs reaching out to fill space with wide leaves. I am humbled and suddenly feel apologetic, realising I have popped so many walnuts into my mouth this year without ever considering that these trees have poured so much nourishment into them and protected each one in its own little wooden case, padded about by fruit. Year after year these plants hold out their generous hands and say take, eat. I have been shown so much kindness.
Then a streak of yellow, a bird, describes a perfect parabola and is back up again in an instant. So steep and smooth is its dive, my own heart is in my mouth and my stomach lurches. Or maybe that's because I remember I'm leaving.
The month I envisaged dragging by is suddenly concentrated into a few days. I see what I am about to leave. Space intensifies with time and crystallises about me like a jewel. The next 24 hours could be critical. There is so much beauty that there is almost too much, as if about to swell and burst, overripe. There are flowers on the tree, red; there are flowers in the beds, pink; there's a bird's egg on the grass, blue; there are apricots on the tree, yellow. I'm not hungry but I go down to pick the fruit we've waited for all year. We watched as their blossom welcomed back spring and quickly fell. We watched the leaves bud and unfold and told off children for plucking their hard little knots of green fruit for weaponry. We've watched them soften and grow and today they are blushing. I eat a few but leave many more for seasons I will not see here. Friends will feast on them, slice and dry them, tire of them fresh and survive winter on them dry till those children, a year older, will climb again for their sour taste of a new year.
There's a hoopoe on the grass who appears to be two-faced, so beak-like is his pointed plume at the back. He's looking forwards and backwards; east and west; past and future.
The walnut tree is still preparing its nuts. I am surrounded by it, so stately, starting from its smooth white trunk and extending to dark boughs reaching out to fill space with wide leaves. I am humbled and suddenly feel apologetic, realising I have popped so many walnuts into my mouth this year without ever considering that these trees have poured so much nourishment into them and protected each one in its own little wooden case, padded about by fruit. Year after year these plants hold out their generous hands and say take, eat. I have been shown so much kindness.
Then a streak of yellow, a bird, describes a perfect parabola and is back up again in an instant. So steep and smooth is its dive, my own heart is in my mouth and my stomach lurches. Or maybe that's because I remember I'm leaving.
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