Shades of Gray

Television networks worldwide were exploding with the news, people were messaging and calling each other to relate the shocking announcement made by America’s first black president, Obama, speculation was raging throughout the countries of the world, mingled emotions of uncertainty, worry, happiness or confusion were coursing through the masses populating this planet, and what was I doing? Oh yeah, snoring. 

Not studying all year, and then realizing that your CIE exams are just a week away is enough to exhaust a person of all their reserves of energy, let me assure you of that. So consequently, after five minutes of studying accompanied by two hours of staring at the calendar and exam date sheet, I finally succumbed and clambered into bed for a rest.

I am slightly chastised to admit that I didn’t find out about the cataclysmic event until the afternoon of the next day, in fact. This is on account of the fact that I have surrendered my cell phone to my mother in a last-ditch attempt to focus on last minute studying and not be distracted by text messages from friends. Which is why I didn’t get those very text messages from friends that would have illuminated me with the groundbreaking events taking place; oh, and have I mentioned, taking place just a mere eighty kilometers from the city in which I live?!

I found out about it in fact when I randomly logged onto Facebook around five in the evening, in an attempt to dispel the boredom that studying economics always induces. I blinked as my eyes flicked over the news feed. It took me a whole two minutes to process what was being said (yes, economics does befuddle my brain that much.) And when my mind finally computed what was being said, it refused point-blank to accept it. REJECTION, REJECTION, it flashed. This whole thing must be a joke.

But a quick search through our ever-reliable Google, and a look at all the television news networks soon proved otherwise. This was not a mere rumour instigated on Facebook. This had actually happened.

Oh my God.

At first, I didn’t really understand the far-reaching implications on Osama bin Laden’s death. Oh, Osama’s dead, I thought. Yippee. That’s gotta be a good thing, right? I mean, now the whole war on terror thing can finally end, and Pakistan can be viewed as a cool country through the eyes of the rest of the international community.

But then, cracks started appearing. Cracks like those that mar the smooth frozen surface of the lake when summer insidiously creeps up. Except they are so faint, barely noticeable at first glance; so that the ice skater who steps onto the surface of the lake does so with complete carefree gaiety, not knowing that any second he is about be sucked down into frigid, icy water. That comparison can be applied to this situation only too well. Because at first, the news that Obama, America’s first coloured president has succeeded in doing what no other president could, having the US forces kill the most hunted man in the universe, the man who has been a global threat to civilians worldwide, the man responsible for promoting terrorism on a rapid scale, seemed, you know… swell. 

But after the initial shock had been absorbed, other questions arose. Different opinions began to be voiced. Other theories were offered. And suddenly, I wasn’t sure anymore.

Obama, as he had announced, had killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, around 10 p.m. But had he? Had he really?

After all, the coming re-elections in the United States needed to be considered. The news that Osama bin Laden had finally been shot down by Obama’s government would cause support for him to rise tremendously, helping him to retain power once more. Could it be a ploy concocted by Obama to tighten his teetering grip on his position?

After all, the ongoing war in Afghanistan hadn’t done much for Obama’s popularity either. The war was being considered as a failure, and this had a significant negative impact on the US government’s popularity. The supposed killing of the most dangerous terrorist known to mankind would certainly make it appear to the whole world as though something productive did come out of the war, that the US government had actually been doing something worthwhile.

And in view of these considerations, what was Pakistan? A scapegoat, really. Heck, in this case, even Osama bin Laden could be considered as nothing more than a scapegoat.

Except, as is the case with most situations, things were not black and white. Shades of grey do exist, almost always do. And they weren’t absent in this scenario either. The guilt and blame could not be neatly fit into boxes or shelves or compartments. One country cannot be branded ‘guilty’, and the other ‘innocent’ and the matter declared closed. Because that is not how politics works. Even I, a person who openly admits that she is sorely lacking in political knowledge, admits that.

Because other questions too, arise. Such as what about Pakistan – my country’s – role in the matter? The government claimed that they had no knowledge or involvement in the operation being carried out. But if that was truly the case, how could the American forces fly from Afghanistan to Abbottabad, so near the federal capital of the nation, without being intercepted? That thought casts disturbing light on the state of security within my country itself. What if a country such as our arch rival India springs a surprise attack upon us? Why, if the government’s claim is to be believed and the condition of our armed forces is really that pathetic, then we are, quite simply put, doomed.

But do not distress. Because, I for one, do not believe it. If there is one thing I have supreme confidence in, it is in the strength, unity and power of our military forces. We have, and I state this with bold conviction, one of the best armies in the world. There is no way we couldn’t have taken down those American planes.

Except, then a new question presents itself: Why didn’t we? The only answer to that can be because our government must have instructed the army not to. But that could only have been done if the government had been aware of the actions being carried out by the US government. So then, what other answer can we accept, except the inevitable: our government has been lying to us.

Which is – and please excuse the profanity – fucking despicable.

Is the government of our country really that weak? That it lies to us – we, the people who elected it – in order to avoid backlash and repercussions from other, mightier countries of the world? Such a thought causes bile to rise in my throat.

Moreover, what about proof? There has been no concrete evidence offered, at least none concrete enough to dispel all suspicions to the contrary. The whole, quick, efficient ‘burial at sea’ thing is just plain weird. The photographs showcased of the dead body are not solid proof enough, for they could have been photographs of bin Laden during some other bombing. Since when are photographs sources of proper evidence, anyways?

So that leaves the ever elusive question: is Osama bin Laden really dead?

To that, I am sorry to say, I have no answer. I only have suspicions, but I have no physical proof to back them up with. Maybe Osama died years ago, and was already buried. Maybe he wasn’t, and is still alive, hiding wherever he was hiding before, lounging on his charpai and watching the telly and laughing at us. This question will probably remain unsolved, as so many questions usually do.

Other little tidbits need to be highlighted as well. Obama’s appointment of General Patraeus? Plain weird. Because, Obama is a Democrat, whereas Patraeus is a Republican. A pretty staunch one at that too, whose principles regarding war and terror are bound to be different. Why Obama would allow a clash of ideologies to take place within his own government, is something I cannot understand.

Pakistan’s reaction to the events unfolding hasn’t been all that encouraging either. The response from the government officials is unsatisfactory. It allows doubt to be stirred up in the minds of the people. The responses have been vague, and self-contradictory and not united, reflecting a poor perception of Pakistan to be highlighted in the international community.

So where does all this leave us? Why, with questions, and more questions that continue to haunt us, and are likely to do so for a long time.

Is Obama a hero to be hailed by masses all over, or simply a man desperate to clutch onto power?

Is Osama bin Laden already dead, or killed in this recent operation, or still hidden?

Is our government unaware, misinformed, weak or lying? (Yes, sadly, none of the options look all that awesome.)

And is the war on terror really over or only just escalating?

To all the concerns highlighted above, there is no definitive answer, but of one thing, we can be certain: Osama bin Laden’s death will have sound repercussions not only in Abbottabad and Islamabad, but all throughout Pakistan.

When Ramadan Encroaches, And Is Gladly Welcomed.

The sky outside is velvety black, the only thing visible from outside the windows of our dining room, a wall of impenetrable darkness. My mother is already seated at the dining table, her fingers stained with salan, folding a piece of warm roti into her mouth. She looks up as we enter, sleepy and bedraggled and motions towards the warm dishes lying out on the dining table. None of us siblings speak as we spoon chicken karhai and mixed vegetable sabzi on our plates; sehri is not a time when any of us feel talkative. Rather we perceive it as a moment of solitude, the whole family gathered and tucking in but doing so in peaceful, harmonious, reflective silence, much unlike the boisterous meals that take place during the rest of the day.

Afterwards, I mix sugar in a bowl of yogurt, and enjoy the sweetened taste spreading across my tongue. My mother sips water quietly. Our driver, a fast eater, departs from the kitchen, and after soaping and rinsing the soiled dishes, our cook soon hastens in his footsteps. The kitchen is silent, the occasional drip from the tap landing against the sink the only sound that resonates, a soft plink-plink echoing softly in our ears.

The smell of spicy chicken hangs in the air. The leaves outside the windows are now slightly visible, perfectly motionless, as the sky gently lightens to a beautiful shade of dark blue. I stare at the silhouettes of the trees, their dark outlines, as my spoon scrapes across the surface of the bowl for the last remnants of Nestle yogurt. We wait, my siblings, my mother and I. In silence, we wait; wait for the sound of azan to reach our vigilant, anticipatory ears.

When it does, we perform wuzu, and then prayers. I unfold the prayer mat; spread it across the dining room carpet. Guilt seizes me momentarily as I execute that action; my conscious briefly flares to life. I contemplate how seldom I complete my prayers; how, in fact, Ramadan is the only month when I am motivated to do so. Shame washes over me. I chastise myself, internally rebuking myself; for procrastinating such an important duty, for forgetting about it completely each time the spirit of Ramadan that lingers in the atmosphere dissolves with the last fast into the excitement and pleasure of Eid. But then, as I slip off my shoes and stand bare-footed on the mat, I console myself with the knowledge that our god is a merciful one. That Allah is the Most Benevolent, the Most Gracious. That he forgives our sins, a thousand times over. The Holy Quran said He did, did it not? And so, the guilt ebbs away, as I fold my hands and recite rote-learned words imprinted in my mind, etched on my heart, but whose language I do not comprehend, and the translation I no longer remember.

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Fasting in summer requires an endurance that I sometimes severely doubt I possess. The sun glares down at my sweat-soaked body, as I drag myself towards the classrooms. The half hour that was usually our lunch break, but that we spend lounging underneath a bunch of trees on the periphery of the school grounds throughout this one month, is now over. My classmates shuffle alongside me, disgruntled at the prospect of an hour of torturous Math awaiting us. Our brains are befuddled, the lack of food or water making us feel slower and more dim-witted than usual. I pass by the water coolers, my gaze sweeps over them with unbridled lust. I ache to reach for one of the pink plastic glasses, fill it to the brim with cold, clear liquid. My throat is parched, and it hurts. Every time during the month of Ramadan, I am reminded that of the twin evils of hunger and thirst, the latter is always the greater, the most dominant.  

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Returning from school is a relief, because it brings with it the realization that the hardest part of the day is over, that in three hours, a morsel of food and a gulp of water will traverse down my throat again. I dump my school bag in the hallway, change hastily out of my uniform, and roam aimlessly about the house. Doing homework is out of the question; plainly put, I lack the mental or physical energy the mundane task requires. Instead, I drift out the front gate and towards my neighbor and friend’s house, where we spend three hours alternately discussing random events of our lives and the hunger tormenting us, punctuated only by the Asr prayers. As the time for Maghrib approaches, activity in her kitchen burgeons to life, her mother stirring mixture in a bowl to make pakoras. I bid my friend farewell then, hug her good-bye, and trod down to my own lair again.

When I walk through the front door, my cook is springing about the kitchen with a vigor born of the blessed, welcome knowledge that in forty-five minutes, we will be able to attain relief. My mother is seated at the dining table, chopping up apples for fruit chaat. I join her and aid her in the task, our knives working briskly, slicing up pears, strawberries, bananas. My sister ambles in, her face creased from a nap, glances at us and the clock, and vanishes once more.

I start counting down the minutes in my head. Fourteen. I eye the globules of cream lying in a clear glass bowl near the packet of darkly brown dates, and a rumble of hunger reverberates in the pit of my stomach. Ten. The table groans under the hefty weight of the many dishes. Six. Is it my imagination or are the hands of the clock slowing down, ticking at a pace so slow that it is causing an unbearable frenzy of impatience to build within me? Three. Oh, those cheese and spinach samosas smell so divine!

And then, we hear it, the sound that we’ve been desiring to hear for the past several hours: the Azan. Instantly, my siblings appear, our grandmother (though she is too old and weak to fast) also arriving to partake in the eager distribution of food. The sound of our servants settling down in the kitchen can be heard. Although I know that dates are the traditional, approved way of breaking open a fast, the thirst is me is too overpoweringly urgent to ignore. It demands immediate attention, demands it now. So I pick up a glass of water, drain its contents in a five seconds flat. Reach for a date, coat it thickly in cream; knowing and anticipating that tomorrow, I will have to do this all over again. But right then, at the moment, the only conscious thought teeming on my mind is that of food, the craving to fill the emptiness in my stomach, and I proceed without any further delay, to do just that.   

In My Element

I love makeup. 

Brushing mascara on my eyelashes, painting my lips with clear gloss, experimenting with different styles of applying various eyeliners, blending individual eye-shadows and shades together to create the perfect blend of dazzling sophistication and stunning gorgeousness on your lids – it all creates in me a feeling of euphoria that few other actions can produce. I love collecting make-up products; standing before the mirror of my bathroom getting ready for a party, trying out looks that are new and limitless in variation. I love how with make-up, your image is under your control, how you can present yourself according to your own wishes. I love the transformation that undergoes, changing the very shape of your eyes, the colour of your lips; subtle changes that bring about a wholly different outcome.

In shops, I’m immediately drawn to the make-up area, my eyes sweeping over shelves with a practice born of experience and vivid interest, hands already reaching for eyeliner pencils to test on my wrists for the easy smoothness that defines liners of good quality. When I was thirteen, my family went on a trip to California, and to this date, out of the dizzying jumble of whirlwind adventure and sightseeing we experienced on that exciting two-month trip, one memory stands out clearly above the rest: my half-hour spent in Sephora. Frowning upon malls and unnecessary expenditure, my father, the ever-consistent believer in the importance of ‘frugality’, discouraged my mother and me to indulge in our beloved hobby of shopping. But on one occasion, we managed to enforce our will and overrode his wishes, escaping into the internationally renowned make-up brand Sephora.

Standing outside the shop, I was gripped with a sense of wonder and heightened anticipation that swept through me like a tidal wave, eliminating all other emotions but the fervent desire to rush inside and prance amongst the various items that represented to me, pure heavenly delight. Once through the doors, the bright, sparkling lights, the vast carpeted floors, the gleaming shelves upon shelves of every kind of make-up product from every renowned brand known to me, topped with tiny spotless mirrors to observe the effects of the ‘testers’, instigated in me such a shattering blast of mindless joy that I thought I would pass out. 

Some people, I’m aware, look critically upon the art of make-up. They prefer natural beauty, emphasizing upon the importance of respecting the way Allah has created you without feeling the need to enhance it using man-made artificial products. They preach about the side effects of using make up; how it adversely affects our skin, and how false it looks. They declare that there is nothing like the simplicity of one’s own looks, the glow that only comes from healthy skin and that no foundation or shimmering blush can duplicate. They frown upon the young girls with made-up faces, drawing heavy sighs and shaking their heads in reproachful reproof. “How sad,” they remark, “the world that we now live in; where young girls need to resort to such measures in order to feel like they’re beautiful, in order to fit in.”

To those people, I have nothing to say. They live in narrowed confines of inflexibility. They believe rigidly in the opinions they nurture, regarding any deviation as ineffectual and hollow. Maybe, they’re right. Maybe their outlooks are the better ones, and contain greater value and better principles. But for each person, joy comes in different forms. As the saying goes, “One man’s trash is another’s treasure.” It’s okay to not share similar views upon everything in life; okay to have conflicting opinions on things, from big issues that affect globally like political decisions, to trivial matters like the use of make-up to make yourselves feel more glamorous. Being similar, plainly put, is boring. Difference is what makes people stand out, and feel all the more alive for it. 

Each person has their own aspects of interest, individual hobbies that are part of their character. Some may enjoy writing, others photography or painting. A hobby can even be as simple as listening – the pure art of listening quietly and understanding, accompanied by the right note of encouraging body language, as a friend pours out their heart to you. A friend of my grandmother enjoys collecting wedding cards, gathering them up and stacking them carefully in a locked box fitted with laced cloth, according to the date of the wedding functions. It amazed me, when my grandmother related her past-time to me. “What a worthless hobby!” I scoffed inwardly. “How pointless! What could ever be the use of collecting wedding cards?” But the more I pondered over it, the more I realized the wrongness of my earlier thoughts. So what if collecting wedding cards seemed trivial or useless to me? To her, the hobby offered several advantages: she would forever be able to remember the dates of all the weddings of friends and relatives, and if she ever needed to make a wedding card for a function within her family, she could consult and observe the designs of all the cards she’d collected to come up with the perfect one of her own. Those cards could serve as reminders of events that promised new hope, new life, memories that she would wish to cherish. Even if the couple ended up in the miserable event of divorce, that wedding card could serve as a concrete proof of a happier time where love and devotion abounded instead.

I chastised myself then. And realized, it doesn’t matter what you enjoy, be in wedding card-collecting, applying makeup, fishing, video-gaming, cooking, tennis, gardening, or any other hobby in the world. All that matters is that when you indulge in it, you feel in your element.  Because, being in your element, is glorious. It creates a satisfaction that is rich and immense, plugging up an emptiness you weren’t even aware of, and fulfilling you in ways that you could never have fathomed.