ChoondiaN da Bazaar

Yasin’s earliest memory of Pakistan is arriving at Maji’s house in his pind and making a bee line for the hookah, he had never seen anything like it before, there were some men sitting around smoking it, his Baiji and other elders all dressed in dhotis, kurtas, and turbans of various colours, but the predominant colour seemed to be beige or off-white, yellowed by the sand and dust in the village,

‘Ah ki eh?’ What is this?
‘Hookah’ came the reply
‘eh khur khur kya karda?’ why is it making a gargling sound? He asked inquisitively
‘hmmm munda bot tyaan karda… es’ch pani ve’ hmmm the boy is very curious… it has water in it, said another of the old men sat on the manja as he passed the pipe round to another curling his long black moustache in preparation to pull a few puffs. Their attention was on Yasin, wondering what he was going to make of it, their old weathered faces and beady eyes focusing on this little four year old, dressed in strange clothes.

Yasin looked in amazement as the old man exhaled the smoke, he had seen smoke come out of his dad’s mouth, but that came from a small white cigarette, this mans smoke came from a big silver thing with a colourful bendy pipe attached to it.

He looked at the hookah, underneath the lid he could see some black rocks that would turn orange each time the old man took a puff, wow, it’s got lights inside, he thought.

‘Ah ki eh?’ he moved his hand towards the lid so that he could see the orange light in full.
‘aaaaaaah’ the lid was hot and burnt his pale little fingers as he tried to lift it, the old men started roaring with laughter.
‘kola eh puttar, kola’ its coal child, coal, came the reply in between the howls of laughter.

This was one of many memories Yasin has in his colourful and emotionally varied collage of Pakistani memories. They grew with each trip, and often each trip grew in the length of time he spent there, until at one point many months of the year were spent there. Yasin loved the trips to Pakistan, the promise of seeing his favourite cousins, aunts and uncles would sometimes be the only thing to get him through the dull, depressing, and cold British school and college terms. It was an escape from a tyrannical, aggressive, and vulture like paternal family, from violence and fear, from having to lie about the mundane to the serious to survive, and a relief to the almost nervous breakdown like symptoms that are brought on by the feeling that you are constantly having to walk on eggshells, to protect not only yourself but those precious to you. From the moment the attendant would open the air-conditioned aircraft door, and the hot, moist air would gush in to engulf him, bringing an instant layer of perspiration to his skin, Yasin would feel. First he would feel the numbness leave, then he would feel life return, he would feel alive and free.

A sparkle in his eyes and a big smile was how Yasin would greet and embrace his maternal grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Sparkling eyes and big smiles, was exactly what Aghaji needed to see, it helped him cope better with the heart stabbing multi pronged grief he would experience upon seeing his daughter and her children, the grief of distance, the grief of black bags under her eyes, the grief of that duppatta draped emotionless expression, the grief of seeing that well rehearsed but transparent look in her eyes telling him ‘everything is okay Abbaji, it really is’ when it never really was, the grief of his daughter’s grief, but most of all, the grief of being helpless.

It was the wealth of Yasin’s father that allowed them to come to Pakistan so often and remain there so long without any financial care. It was this wealth too that was the main reason Aghaji married off the second eldest of his nine children into that house. And it was in this wealth that Yasin’s mother drew some sort of a solace, albeit abysmally small. Baji, as she was known to her younger brothers and sisters, always wore the most amazing shalvaar kameezs made from Chinese and Japanese silk, she wore chadors from India that weren’t available in Pakistan, she bought suitcases full of saris for her sisters, that had come from Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka, and Karachi, saris that her sisters couldn’t even dream of, Baji could and did, buy them all in England. Once in Pakistan, Baji, just like her children would also seek solace. Apart from visiting every major Sufi Shrine she could, she would visit that other temple, the temple that every self respecting wealthy Punjabi woman would visit with great regularity, the temple where for a few brief moments in their grief laden existence, these women would become at one with themselves and all thought of the outside world with its multitude of problems and pains would leave them, leave them to feel light, happy, and joyful, where the touch and feel of every new cloth rolled out in front of them by the shopkeeper would bring them that one step closer to eternal pink sari bliss.

Every Pakistani bazaar is set up for women, save for those few butch streets with oil covered mechanics and greasy metal things for tractors. Every shop has cheap, bright epileptic fit inducing pictures and designs of Ya Allah or Ya Mohammed or some other Koranic surah made visible to the passing devotees to ensure them of the honest credentials of the men in beards with a mehrab on their foreheads, and a skull cap on their heads, shouting ‘baji, ao na, dekho nava lawn da dizen aya, ao baji’ sister, come, see these new lawn designs, come sister, said in an attempt to veneer the sleazy money grabbing true self in a thin sheet of humility, respectability and decency.

But Yasin could always see through these pretend maulvi wannabes, he knew a real maulvi doesn’t sell silk and lawn in a bazaar but he teaches children how to read the Koran and say Namaz, humility and decency would be etched on his face and he would never speak in such loud tones unless it was to scold a misbehaving child, a real maulvi would lower his gaze in front of women not look straight at them, a real maulvi would be like the maulvi that visits Aghaji’s house to teach them Koran, a simple honest man, with plain clothes, a well kept beard and a genuine smile.

Nonetheless, he still loved these trips to the bazaar, that strange bazaar scent of colourful spices piled up high on carts. Cinnamon, cloves, dhania, zeera, haldi, lal mirch, mixed with sweet smelling fruits, oranges, guavas, mangoes, lemons, limes, jamuns, kharbuzeh, and tarbuzeh, with a touch of dust, and a sprinkling of second hand cigarette smoke and big bus diesel fumes, to create that special eau de bazaar. He loved the noise of the main street with horns blaring, rickshaws screaming, tak tak tak of the hooves of the horses and donkeys pulling carts and tangas, shouts of the vendors, the bubbling engine noises of big colourful buses as they slowed down to pick up and drop off people going to far away places like Multan, Bhakkar, Leiyah, Sadiqabad, Sukkur, Quetta, Faisalabad, Lahore, Karachi, Pindi, the names of all these cities being shouted out at the top of each conductors voice, Multaneh Multaneh Multaneh, ji ao Multan vastey, and once the bus was full, the conductor would hit the side hard, bang bang, chaley ji chalo his shalvar and kurta blowing violently like a flag in a wind storm as the bus picks up speed and he continues to hang half out half in the open doorway. From this main street thought Yasin, you could go to any place in the world, the bazaar was alive day and night, it was always buzzing. It seemed as if the whole city had come here, and that’s why Aghaji’s mohalla was so quiet.

There was only one drawback, he could never stay in the main street for long. He had to go to every cloth shop with his mother and aunts that took their fancy. His youngest massi knew the bazaar and all the new shops well, down winding tight alley ways and old buildings, that if you ever looked up still had names like Ganesh Brothers 1907, and Bahadur Singh 1889 engraved on them, although you would have to look, as after all these years the paint was falling from the engravings.

In the summer when the heat was stifling even in the evenings, Yasin would enjoy the respite of a big cloth shop, as they had air conditioning and fans, and would draw the curtains so the women could let their dupattas fall off their heads in peace without worrying about passers by, while they oohed and aahed at the latest and greatest cloth that came out from the mills both local and foreign. Pink, purple, red, blue, green, ferozi, jamni, gulabi, hara, neela, peela, and every other imaginable colour in every hue and shade would be rolled out with a ‘eh dekho baji, bari vadya shey eh’ look at this sister, its a beautiful piece, the shopkeeper just as enthralled by the cloth as the women he was trying to sell it to. The best part for Yasin, was the cold bottles of Pepsi or Mirinda that the shopkeeper would order to cool his customers down and keep their children occupied for longer. Yasin would often drink two, as neither his mother nor the shopkeeper would have any objection.

It was a hot summers evening like any other when they had come out of a shop after buying some more cloth, Yasin’s mother and aunties on a shoppers high ‘chal meri nand vastey sohna jeya soot hogaya’ a lovely suit for my sister in law, Baji said with an air of relief, ‘meiN ta kehndi ah, tussi ram naal apney vastey rakhlo’ I think you should just keep it for yourself said Mami, ‘haw hai ni pabhi, mussi mussi tey labya surr da jora, emvi jeya kapra dey ditta tey landan beTThi nand diya saw gallaN sunna’ Yasin switched off to the usual after purchase conversation between his mum and Mami. He was desperate to go home to water the plants in front of Aghaji’s house and in the process have a water fight with his cousins who would be back from tuition by now, his mind was wondering off to the hose pipe and lush trees in Aghaji’s small front lawn, when he felt a pinch in the side of his stomach that bought him sharply back to the bazaar.

He quickly turned to see who it was, to his surprise it wasn’t another child his age picking a fight or chancing a quick pinch or a kick before running off, there wasn’t even a bicycle or a horse cart going by that could be carrying something that could accidentally hit against him, no, not at all, instead it was a much older man with a moustache who turned back to give Yasin what felt like a vomit induced smile and then a wink. Shocked, stunned, and paralysed, first his throat dried up, and then a tsunami of emotions hit him… hit him hard.

Angry… angrier… angrier still, ashamed, guilty, dirty, frustrated, confused, dazed, shocked… did he mean what I thought he meant? No he didn’t… God… yes he did, the dirty pervvy bastard… the nasty Paki, how dare he, how fucking dare he… shit, hell… oh my God he touched me like a… no one touches me like that, me, me… Allah, oh my God, how dare he. Kutta, kameena, zaleel… harami… zaleel, khabees… zaleel, zaleel, zaleel. The man began to melt into the crowd, until the black hair on his head, became a black dot moving in a sea of black dots.

And then Yasin realised, he was a 12 year old boy in the middle of the bazaar, and the wave of emotion stopped abruptly in his throat, constricting him, the frustration caused by the realisation that he cant even say anything to anyone adding pain to the constriction, and the self hatred ignited by the fact that he didn’t say or do anything bringing tears to his eyes. He stood there, still, stuck, his feet as if roots had come from the ground and tangled around him to keep him there, the rest of the world buzzed by, indifferent to the people pushing by, sounds sounded different, strange, blurred, muffled, and his vision, cloudy.

‘ganney’ ‘gaz’ ‘choley’ ‘rupiye’
How dare he, oh my God
‘Taze taze’ ‘garam’ ‘panj rupiye glass’ ‘choley’
Allah, that besharm,
‘choley’ ‘vih’ ‘da rus’ ‘choley’ ‘panj rupiye ji panj rupiye’
Hell, he just… oh my God
‘vih rupiya gaz’ ‘panj rupiye glass’

The kaleidoscope of colours and sounds in the emotion induced blur began to clear in what seemed like a quick eternity, the yells and shouts of the shopkeepers and hawkers cutting through his head, helping the clarity come through, bringing him back to the street.

‘vih rupiya gaz, vih rupiya’
‘taze taze ganney da ras, panj rupiye glass, sirf panj rupiye’
‘choley, garma garm namkeen choley’

‘choley leh la puttar’ Have some choley son
‘meiN ni ajj choley khaney chacha’ I don’t want any today uncle, Yasin could only manage a whisper with his hoarse voice.