Jasmines in Colorado (part 2 of 3)

A week has passed since her last concert. On my insistence, she finally agrees to show me where she lives. We decide against the bus and take a slow twenty minute walk to her place. The tiny living room of her small student apartment is exquisitely decorated. A large TV. Extra-large speakers. A set of tablas next to a vintage harmonium. Three half-finished water colors resting on small stands, next to large glass window. And tons of books. Books on literature, music, dancing, and of course, a complete set of Ghalib’s works.

“It’s good to finally see your place.” “Very unstudentlike.”
“Yeah. I’m a clean freak.” “And I don’t like having roommates.”
“Does this place have a bedroom?”
“What kind of stupid question is that? Why do you want to know that?” “I’m not that kind of girl, you know?” she smiles.
“I was just asking,” I reply innocently.
“You probably wouldn’t know what to do, in there, anyways.”
“Yes,” I clench my teeth. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
She pulls my arm and drags me down to the sofa, next to her, “OK. Let’s lay down some ground rules, before you get too frustrated and jump off a bridge.”
“Ground rules?”
“Here is my best offer: everything below the shoulders is out of bounds. Everything above the shoulders is fair game.”
“Hmm,” I think for a while. “Here is my counteroffer: how about everything below the waist being out of bounds. And everything above the waist, in-bounds.”
“You get something out of that,” she smiles, looking down at herself. “But what do I get?”
“All of this,” I reply, flexing my muscles, doing my best impersonation of a muscle-bound Arnold.
“Sorry. No can do,” she lets her head fall into my lap. “Your offer is loaded in your favour.”

“Can I use your phone?”
I notice her getting very nervous, “I…I don’t have a phone.”
“What kind of an apartment doesn’t have a phone?” “You can afford a car, but you can’t afford a phone?”
“It’s none of your business,” she surprises me with the rudeness of her reply, and starts walking away, angrily, towards the kitchen, without looking back at me.
“Nadia.” “Listen to me Nadia.” “Nadia,” I scream out her name.
She finally turns around.
“Yaar, soe rahee ho kia?” “Suntee kiyon nahin?” I am starting to get irritated.
“Sorry?” “Sorry for what?”
“Sorry naheen. ” “Soe rahee! Soe rahee; as in sleeping!” “Are you deaf? And do we have to speak English twenty-four hours a day!”
Her face turns white with shock. She is starting to sweat. It’s the first time I have seen her so confused and out of control. “Can you leave?” “Just leave.” “Please leave me alone.” “I want to be alone,” she yells repeatedly, and points me to the door.
“What the hell is wrong with this girl,” I whisper silently, to myself, in frustration.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” “Nothing! Nothing!” she is screaming uncontrollably now.
“How did you hear that?” I ask. “How did you hear that from so far away?” I move my lips again and again, without making a sound. She answers correctly every time.
“What’s going on,” I think to myself. I turn the lights on and off, and call her name, asking her to reply. I repeat this for the next thirty seconds, not realizing the agony I am putting her through.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she screams. She is down on her knees, bent over; her hands on her face, sobbing profusely. All of a sudden, everything starts to make sense.

She doesn’t have a phone, because she can’t hear it ring. She won’t introduce me to any of her close friends, because she doesn’t want me to find out her secret. She returns home, before sunset, from the lake, every day, because she can’t see my face clearly, at night. She doesn’t need to hear me speak, because she can read my lips. She always uses English, because she isn’t proficient in Urdu lip-reading. She locks her eyes onto the harmonium keys, while performing, so she can adjust her voice to the music, visually. She doesn’t ignore half of my comments, on purpose. She just cannot hear them!

I walk up to her, half in shock, half in sympathy. I don’t know what to say. I lift her up from the ground. “I’m sorry.” “I’m so sorry, Nadia……I didn’t know.” I cannot stop apologizing. I start wiping the tears off her cheeks.

She raises her head. Slowly opening her eyes. They are filled with a strange mixture of sadness and anxiety that does not suit her personality. I can hear the next three words coming out of her mouth, before she has even uttered them.

“I am………...deaf.”

I don’t know what to do. I want to hold her. Hug her. Kiss her….Protect her? I want to do whatever she wants me to do. I want to say whatever she wants me to say. Anything! But, strangely, there is only one thought circling in my mind, “How do you sing?”

“Please leave,” she almost begs. Her black mascara streaks down her cheeks, marking the lines of her tears. She points to the door again, “Please…..Please leave me alone.”

I am totally devastated.

xxxxxxx

It’s two o’ clock at night. I have been tossing and turning, and cannot sleep. I walk into the bathroom, wearing only my shalwar. I wash my face and stare, straight, into the mirror above the sink. I cannot recognize the person I see in the mirror. I am extremely angry at myself, for what I have done. Most of all, I cannot stop thinking about the anguish Nadia must be going through. There is an extremely painful knot in my stomach, and I feel like I am going to vomit. The emotional roller-coaster of the past few months is something I am not used to. I take a deep breath to calm myself and try to analyze the situation objectively.

“I am twenty-five. She is twenty-four,” I try to move towards a logical solution. “We obviously like each other.” “She is very rich and I am not poor.” “Same country, same language, same culture, same religion. And most of all, the same approach to life. In a few months, we’ll both be back in Pakistan.”

“Marry her?” “Yes, why don’t I just marry her!” “I am going to end up marrying someone, someday. Why not her?” “Simple.” “Chiragh talay andhaira!” I am surprised at myself for not thinking of this earlier.

I ride my motorbike to the university, each day, for the next two weeks. But there is no sign of her. The same routine, everyday: a quick trip to the auditorium, hoping to find her there; a walk to her apartment, where I slip my daily note under her door, apologizing, in a different language each day: Urdu, English, Punjabi, French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic. I am starting to run out of languages. Each note signed with a smiley face; just like she draws them - one eye bigger than the other. And after all of this, I walk to down to our brown marble park bench, where I wait, each day, for hours.

Finally, on the thirteenth day – the first Friday of the new month - I find a pink sticky note stuck to the bench, “You’re a jerk. I hate you!.....But I want a ride on your bike. Tomorrow. 11 am. In front of my apartment. Don’t be late, or you’ll regret it.”

The sun is out. The sky is clear. The birds are singing. Life is good again. It is a very sunny Saturday morning and I am on my way to the campus. My standard attire: faded blue jeans, polo shirt, white Reeboks, and a brown leather jacket.

“Gataaaa rahaaa-aaay mera dil-lll…Tou he mairee-eee-e manzil…Kaheen beitein naaa….,” I find myself swaying, from the left end of the road to the right, on Hwy 287, trying to imitate Mukesh’s rendition of the famous Hindi movie song.

“Get in your fuckin’ lane, you moron!” a bald man sticks his head out of his pick-up truck window, and gives me the finger. I smile at him, from underneath my red helmet, and continue singing; lost in my own world.

I am totally un-irritable, today.

I park my motorcycle right outside her apartment building, looking at my watch. She comes out of the door, exactly at 11:00. And once again surprises me with her choice of dress: black leather pants and black boots. The upper half of her body, half naked, in a grey sleeveless cut-off shirt.

She gives me a dirty look, indicating she is still angry at me. I try to return the look and we both break up into laughter. All is forgiven and forgotten.

“Ishq nay Ghalib nakamma kar diya…..warna…..warna….warna….,” ; I try to interject an appropriate verse, for the situation, expecting her to complete it.
“Yeah….whatever,” she replies casually.

“Which men’s magazine did you just step out of,” I find myself enunciating each word more clearly than before, for her convenience.
“I dress like this in Pakistan also,” she gives me her standard reply.
“No gajra today?”
“Us biker chics don’t wear gajras!” she spits out her chewing gum and answers with an attitude.
“Since when did you become a biker chic?”
“When in Rome, do as the Romanians do.”
“You’re going to freeze your ass off in that shirt,” I warn her.
She points to her backpack, “My jacket is in there.” “And quit staring at my belly-button, you pervert.”
“I can’t help it.”
“What is it with you and girl’s belly-buttons, anyways?”
“Mullah ki dhor masjid tak,” I reply in Urdu, making sure I enunciate clearly, once again.
“Haven’t you ever seen a girl’s belly-button before?”
“Hmm…I have seen American, French, Spanish, Mexican, Indian and Chinese belly-buttons. I even saw one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a National Geographic special, once. But, no, I have never seen a Pakistani girl’s belly-button, in real life, before. At least not up close, like this.”

“OK, cut the crap, and get on,” I point to the back seat and hand her a helmet.
“Wait. We still have a score to settle. You owe me an apology.”
“I’m sorry. Is that enough?” I say quickly. “Now let’s get going.”
“Nope, not like this. I think we will have to settle this, like men.” “I get to take one free shot at you,” she clenches her fist and puts in front of my face.
“You want to hit me?” “Are you nuts!”
“Yes. I am.”
“OK,” I play along. “Take your best shot. Let me have it. Anywhere you want,” I take off my jacket and raise my hands over my head.
She places her left foot next to my right foot. Screams, “Yaaaaaaaa,” and swings her clenched right fist, with all her might, straight into the middle of my stomach!
“Dear God, Naaaa--diaaa!” I buckle over in pain like a pretzel, grabbing my stomach with both hands, and fall sideways onto the grass. “Where the hell did you learn to hit like that?” “Don’t you know I bruise easily?” I scream out, rolling on the ground in agony.
“Just be glad it wasn’t five inches lower,” I hear her laughing uncontrollably, at my plight. I look upwards and see her standing on top of me, admiring her biceps.

“OK, you sissy. Let’s go,” she helps me up and I, slowly, limp onto my motorbike. She jumps on the passenger seat; nudges herself right next to my back, and locks her arms around my stomach. I had purchased the bike third-hand, hoping it would last me for my eight months stay in Denver. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined, in a million years, that one day, I would be riding it up to Pikes Peak with a Pakistani girl – or any girl, for that matter - on the back seat.

I rev up the engine of my used yellow Suzuki Ninja 500. “Don’t let me down now,” I find myself talking to my bike, as if it were a horse.

And we’re off! Out the university entrance, through a side road and onto Hwy 287. We take an exit towards 85 South, which eventually turns into Interstate 25. The mountain ranges are visible to our right as we reach the suburbs of Colorado Springs and make a U-turn onto the small roads going through the woods towards the trails up to Pikes Peak. The nineteen miles Pikes Peak road is in front of me. I pay the $10 toll, shift into the lowest gear and point my motorcycle upwards. I am negotiating the uphill turns at high speed; however, Nadia seems least bothered and totally relaxed. Her head turned sideways; her helmet resting on the back of my neck. I feel her actually loosen her grip around my stomach.

She seems completely confident that I will not let anything happen to her.

We make it up the winding single-road to a scenic park, halfway to the peak. It is quite a bit colder up here. At 11,000 ft. above sea level, we find ourselves standing at the base of one of the highest points in the USA. The whole areas is filled with fog; the ground disappearing and re-appearing, as we walk through the fog, towards the edge of the park. The scenery is beautiful – the mountain range to our right, the snow-tipped peak up and behind our backs and the lush green tree-covered valleys below us.

I notice Nadia walking all the way to the front edge of the park and standing right next to the boundary fence. There is a very steep fall, into a deep valley, just five feet ahead of her. She gazes down, over the edge, into the emptiness; takes a deep breath, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, breaks out into one of her songs.

She has caught me, and the other tourists, completely by surprise. Slowly a small crowd gathers, around -totally intrigued by the beautiful voice of a beautiful girl, singing in language they cannot understand.

“aa-aaa-aaaa-aaaaaa-aa…,” she starts off in the thaat parent raag kalyan – going through each of the natural tone sudha swaras on the way up and reversing them on the way down: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ne Sa – Sa Ne Da Pa Ma Ga Re Sa. Each note, effortlessly flowing out of her mouth, piercing through the fog, resonating off the surrounding mountains and filling the air with an irresistibly sweet melodious harmony:

lagay tumm say mann kee lagan……….
lagan…lagay tumm say mann kee lagan
lagay tumm say mann kee lagan……….
lagan…lagay tumm say mann kee lagan

She is completely cut-off from everyone now – lost in her own world. Singing at the top of her voice; hitting every note perfectly; her eyes closed; her head swaying slowly from side to side; her index finger and thumb, together, drawing out the invisible tunes of the song, in thin air.

gali gali ghoomaaa--aaaaaay
dil tujhay doondhaaa-aaay….
teray bin tarsein nayaan…….
lagan, lagay tumm say mann ke lagan……….
lagan…lagay tum say mann kee lagan

She looks over to me as she sings the next lines of this classically melodius song.

aaaaa jaa--ooooo maairii jaa--aaan
mairay dil kaa jehaaannnnn…….....
maa-aaa-ngaa-aay taairie khabarrr
dhooo-nndaaay tera-aa nishaa-aannnn

She gestures over to me, asking me to join her. I hesitate, reminding myself that I have never taken a shot at singing, outside my bathroom shower. She is singing and simultaneously gesturing to me. It is obvious; she wants me to join her in a peak-side duet. The small crowd of American tourists – mostly old retired grandfathers and grandmothers – claps and almost in unison, screams, “Get up there.”

She continues with her lines, as I slowly and very nervously, step right next to her at the edge of the mountain range; not knowing how I will pull off this strangely impromptu duet. I am scared of heights, but, at the moment, quite a bit more scared of singing in public.

teraaa-aaaaaa tujh ko-ooo soooo-oooomp dae
kiyaaa laa-aaagat hai mooo-ooore……………
mai-iiira mujh mei-iin kuch naaa-aa-aaa-heen
jo hoowat so too-oouuu houu-ooot……………..

She is truly in her element, now. Her classically trained voice hitting the very high notes . Moving from one clearly and crisply articulated octave to the next. Not a hint of effort on her face. She can hear the whole orchestra in her mind - the sitar rhythms straddling in between the tabla beat and the harmonium’s ragas.

She opens her eyes, as if telling me to sing the next line. I say a quick prayer, hope for success, and try to do my best impersonation of Mehdi Hassan.

“taaee-raaa-aaay bin mera-aaa mann,” I start off.
“jaaa-iisa-aaay bann mein hiran-nnn,” she steps in.
“jaaa-iisa-aaay pagliiii pawan-nnnn,” I start to feel a bit more confident now.

We are now in full flow; alternating lines, as we move through this difficult song. She closes her eyes, when she sings. And then opens them to read my lips, when I start. I wonder if she can hear our voices echo off the surrounding mountains.

A lone cloud descends from the peak and surrounds our audience and us, completely in fog. I put my right arm around Nadia’s shoulder; she puts her left arms around my back, still drawing lines through the air, with her right hand, as she sings. We are slowly swaying side to side, looking at each other. For the next five minutes, we continue our impromptu performance, in front of our impromptu audience, surrounded by the misty fog of a garden on the heavenly peak.

lagay tum say mann kee lagan….…...
lagan, lagay tum say mann kee lagan
lagay tum say mann kee lagan…..…..
lagan, lagay tum say mann kee lagan

With every note, whatever little doubts I may have had in asking Nadia to marry me, are drifting away – far far away – tumbling, end over end, into the deep cravesses of the valley below.


xxxxxxx

Two more weeks have passed. Nadia only has one more month left at the university, but I still haven’t developed the courage to ask her to marry me. “It’s now or never,” I keep telling myself.

It turns out that I don’t have the faintest idea of how marriage proposals are carried out in Pakistan. “Isn’t my mother supposed to talk her mother, first. Or is that just in the movies,” I ask myself, again and again. “Am I supposed to meet her father, first?” “Do I get a ring and get down on one knee?”

Most of all, I am scared to death that she will say, “No.”

“It’s called otosclerosis. I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty. As long as I am looking straight at someone’s face, I am OK,” we are sitting together, next to the lake again.

“It’s an abnormal growth of the middle ear,” she continues. “It usually starts around one’s early 20s. It can happen gradually. Slowly, it started happening to me, also. I couldn’t hear low-pitch noises. I couldn’t hear whispers. I eventually had surgery and a prosthetic device was placed in my ear. Unfortunately, that did not help. When the otolaryngologist told me I would lose all my hearing, I didn’t want to believe him. The music got fainter and fainter. The birds stopped singing. The TV had to be turned to full volume. My parents had to speak louder and louder to communicate with me.”

“I went into severe depression, thinking my life was over.” “How could I live in a totally silent world? How could I live without my music and my songs?” “My parents enrolled me in lip-reading classes.” “When nothing was helping, they decided to send me here. “I enrolled for a Masters degree at Colorado College, and threw myself into the programs for the hearing disabled.” “Lip-reading, sign language, finger spelling, audiologists and speech-language pathologists: you name it, I have tried it.” “It’s been great and I am slowly starting to adjust back into my life.”

“How long before…How long before….”
“How long before I lose all my hearing?” she completes the difficult sentence for me.
“Yes, how long.”
“I don’t know. It is getting worse and worse.”
“Will you be able to adjust?”
“It’s so hard. One moment your mind is filled with the sounds of the world, and the next day it is an empty silence. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t gone through it.”
“Can you hear yourself sing?”
“Yes, I know my voice in my mind. And I can still faintly hear the instruments. I follow the keys with my eyes. But the musicians have to adjust to my lead. I cannot follow them, now.”
“How do you cope, Nadia?” I reach out to hold her hand.
“We are more powerful than we realize. Our mind adjusts to stresses, in ways, one cannot imagine. Doctors have helped. Psychologists. My parents. The campus environment. My belief in God. My music and poetry. And friends; friends like you. And others,” she looks straight at me, her eyes filled with sincerity.

“ghum say kho-gar ho jo insaan tou phir mit jaata hai ghum…mushkalain mujh par pareen itni”
“kay aasaan ho gayeen,” she finishes off my sentence, exactly on cue, with a tear rolling down her cheek.

I gently wipe the tear off, with my thumb. I run my fingers through her hair, and once again, kiss her on her forehead. We start our long walk back from our bench to her apartment.

We walk along the grassy fields, towards the narrow path that we always follow through the small oak forest. I start to notice, more closely, every single sound in the air. Sounds that I had always ignored before: the birds singing; the crackling of the dry leaves, under our feet; the wind blowing through the branches of the trees; the students screaming out each other’s name; the sound of cars, at a distance.

“I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty… I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty,” her words keep echoing through my mind, as I quietly walk, slightly behind and to the left of her. “How much can she hear? And with how much, “difficulty?” Can she hear the noises, in our surroundings that the rest of us take for granted. Or does she live in universe of complete silence? What does she do at night, when the world of sight changes to the world of sound? How does she hear her professors when they are teaching, if they are not facing her? And most of all, how does she hear the music, when she is singing? How does she stay in rhythm with the instruments? Does she feel the vibrations from the tabla, or can she actually hear it? What about the sitar and the harmonium? What about her own voice? Can she hear her own voice? How is she able to hit all the notes, so correctly, if she cannot hear herself?

I have so many questions.

We are walking silently towards her apartment, and haven’t said a word to each other for five minutes. Both lost in our own trains of thought. I feel like, deliberately, dropping the stack of library books in my hand, to see her immediate reaction to the loud noise. However, I, wisely, decide against this ridiculous idea.

“Quit staring at me,” I find myself staring at her again. I always wondered, why she rarely talked, whenever we are walking back in the evening. Now I know why. She cannot see my face clearly. Even in the afternoons, as we stroll around the lake, she always spends much of her time, walking backwards, in front of me, her arms crossed behind her - a habit, which I had written off to childlike playfulness, actually turns out to be a lot more than that. We have never gone anywhere, together, after sunset. Not even to a restaurant. And, it occurs to me that, until she disclosed her hearing loss to me, we had never even sat in a car or a cab, together. I have never even seen her driving her own car.

I am slowly starting to admire the dexterity and shrewdness with which she has hidden her hearing disability, from me.

“Why don’t you use a hearing aid?” I am not sure whether I should have asked this question or not.
“I do. But just not…” she starts off with her reply and then stops.
“But just not in front of me,” I complete her sentence. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want you to find out,” she finishes off her explanation.
“If this isn’t true love, then what is?” I start thinking to myself.