Saira

When I was young i dreamed of being a writer. A widely published, world-renowned, best-selling writer. It was a dream i secretly harbored for years as I spend endless nights blackening piles and piles of papers of what I hoped one day would be a masterpiece of my generation. But until I was ready I did not want to share any of it. Naturally shy I could not bear to be humiliated by my evil siblings (They eventually grew up) or ridiculed by my parents with some below-par story telling so I practiced day and night, getting little sleep or rest. To avoid being caught breaking the 8 o' clock lights out curfew I would hide in my bath tub reading and writing, away from the scrutiny of the world. It was my special time. I would slip away into my special world of imagination and fantasy and create characters, baptizing them, living their lives, feeling their love and pain and giving them a lifetime of happiness. I was the happiest during those nights cocooned in the cold hard ceramic confines of that bath tub. I was just a lonely kid and the pen was my best friend i.e. until saira came in my life. I was twelve and at the peak of my literary glory when we moved to Quetta, a small city near the western border of Pakistan. In the house next door lived a Persian speaking hazara family with a daughter perhaps a year younger than me. She was everything I was not. Confident, friendly and extremely direct. One evening she came over and declared herself to be my best-friend. Irritated though I was, but I couldn't bear to break her heart and tell her otherwise. That would have been extremely rude, right? what I didn't know at the time was that my good manners will reward me with a lifelong relentless, unwavering and extraordinary friendship. To cut a long story short, she and I were inseparable soon thereafter. She would come over every afternoon and leave only when her parents send their servant for her. We would spend hours talking, playing and dreaming. One such afternoon she discovered my valuable box of manuscripts. How? well that is material for another post, a rather funny story. Anyway, she looked at the box and then at a rather stunned me. without saying a word she picked up the papers and started reading. I sat down quietly watching her skim through page after page. Suddenly, my heart sank as she started to shake her head. I was too afraid to move or talk or ask her anything. She looked up from the paper she was holding and said, " You should buy a typewriter, your handwriting sucks". With that she handed me the box and demanded I read to her. That day onwards I had a reader, well a listener anyway, and a fan. She would actually come over just to see if I had written the next chapter and wanted to know what happened. Soon, I would write and she would read at parallel. To say the least, I was ecstatic to finally have someone appreciate my work. But, like all great things, this arrangement came to an abrupt halt when one day ami(my mother) raided my room!!!!!!!! Well technically it was my fault since the room was a mess and my mom came to clean while I was at school. That afternoon, I came home to find my room spotlessly clean except three garbage cans filled with what once had been my master piece, but now was mere confetti. My heart dropped at my feet. I felt somebody had snatched my dream and crushed it under her feet. I was pretty sure these feet belonged to a woman, knowing my father hardly ever entered my room. Never the challenging kind i just sat down on my bed staring at the pieces of paper wondering if I could ever salvage any of it. Suddenly the door opened and my mom came in. I looked up at her with eyes filled with tears. She was not impressed. She demanded to know who had written this filth. OK in my defence my stories were strictly PG 13 and can in no way be classified as filth. At the same time the material was definitely more advanced than what an average 12 yr old brain would usually produce. What can I say I had been exposed to literature at a young age and I also had a very active imagination. I was smart. She should have been happy. But happy she was not. She blamed the writing to be the cause of everything wrong on the face of the earth, my average grades, my moodiness, my dark circles ( actually all these were true), my lack of social skills, my perverted mind (i resented that), my lack of need to be friends with my siblings ( excuse me?? my sister was a nerd and my brother was a teenager, THEY hated ME) and last but not the least, the cause of me ultimately ending up in HELL ( I didn't buy that for a minute - after all I was such a sweet kid and oh soooo smart). Anyway, after this ugly incident i was under constant supervision and could no longer write at my discretion. They even monitored my secret writing place, the bath tub. I guess it wasn't such a secret after all. I was broken hearted and felt so sad and lost. I was such an inhibited soul those days that I could not even muster up the courage to challenge them or tell them about my secret dream. I forgot to mention during this time of crisis, Saira was visiting her relatives. I cant remember where but she was gone for a few days. upon her return she demanded to read(listen) the next chapter of the book and so I told her what had happened. I showed her the pieces of paper with tear-filled eyes. As always she said nothing. But we did spend the next 5 hours trying to match all the pieces of paper and sticking together some three hundred pages ( God awful huge handwriting) of my valuable story book. Afterwards she took my manuscripts and hid them at her house. Few nights later while we were playing meaningless game of rummy she looked at me and said, "you are really good, you should not stop. Auntie will eventually realise she is wrong". For a second i thought she was referring to the game. But since I had lost every single game of rummy i had ever played, I realised she was referring to my writing. I just nodded at her and we continued to play. I don't remember if I was any good since I mostly wrote to escape and mostly cause it came so naturally and of course it is hard to take the word of a 10 yr old kid whose reference point was Enid Blyton's "Mr. Twiddle goes to the park". It was not these words or any other she ever spoke to me over the years. It was her confidence in me, her never-ending faith that slowly pushed me on the path to becoming who I am today. Over the years we helped each other out so many times always unknowingly it seems. We saw our lives and worlds change so many times and always found each other when the times were the hardest without ever calling out for the other. Today, our friendship turned 20. We haven't seen each other in 5 yrs and haven't talked in 2. Our lives are poles apart, our world separated by seas and continents. But I know that the next time my world is hit by a meteoroid, I will find her standing right behind me, not saying anything but slowly taking the pain away. I miss you Saira, you were my sister when i had not found mine. I never said this to you ever but thank you for always knowing my pain.