mehrunnisa, at home in zurich
the english language has specific words for past, present and future. yesterday, today and tomorrow mark particular moments in time. unlike urdu where yesterday and tomorrow share the same word. the word ‘kal’ [کل], a construct of the letters kaaf and laam, holds different tracts of time together. this changes the perception of time by making the past and future seamless.
zainab shah makes a note of this while talking about samosas, those triangular shaped savoury pastries stuffed with potatoes or meat that are eaten year round in pakistan. but which have a special place on the table during ramazan which starts in mid-april this year. time, or rather its movement and inertia have been a leitmotif of the pandemic. sometimes, it is hard to believe that it has been over a year of living this way.
i had a long chat with my parents on whatsapp this afternoon. they were at home in islamabad along with their cats zubeida and rose. rose likes to join the conversation. my parents translate her meowing. a short, soft one is for attention. a longer plaintive one is a demand to be let out into the garden. we exchanged stories about my grandparents. these memories are different chapters in time. they are of those of my childhood and of my parents' childhood too.
my dadi (paternal grandmother) died either at 99 or a 100. she was a petite woman with a formidable personality. she was god fearing and deeply religious. food was her love language. her life was so full of change. marriage brought her to the city from the village. she experienced the full thrust of subcontinental history. at the time of partition, she and my dada were in delhi. my dada was stationed there as he was in the army. they made it to pakistan on the last military flight out sparing them the carnage and terror of crossing the border by foot or train. she lived through the subsequent wars with india and eventually the independence of bangladesh. and as baba says, she witnessed so much modernisation. it is only in looking back that i have been able to acknowledge just how much of the times she had learnt to live with.
she was of the view that her grandchildren lacked courage. apparently the city made us soft and scared. along with the staple stories of djinns and churails (witches), were ones of her own experiences. these are the ones that have remained with me. i shared my favourite with baba which goes like this. it takes place in jabalpur in india. my dadi was on her own possibly with her eldest born. there was an attempted burglary. dadi decided to pursue the thief on her horse and when she tried to hit him with a stick, it failed because he had rubbed oil on his upper body to escape being caught. baba had not heard this story but did share one of his own. it turns out that she was a skilled horse rider, riding bare back and able to calm an agitated horse whilst holding onto baba with one arm around his chest.
leslie jamison writes that ‘remembering the past is also a way of believing that this moment will someday be the past.’ family memories, especially ones that sit within the arc of sweeping historic moments are a reminder that this time too shall come to pass.
Jenny, at home (with Mehrunnisa in Zurich)
The pandemic time grinds on, here at least, where most of the restrictions must stay in force for a while longer. No one is doing much sleeping but some of us are living on dreams – the before time is a recurring one that forms the basis of a fantasy future and the present is a waking anxiety dream.
I was brought up on the maxim that describing dreams is the mark of a tedious person – just as there is always a tweet, there is always a parliamentary exchange, and I got two in one while I was thinking about this – but whilst I do believe that the details of mine would be terminally boring to anyone else, I’m never not ready to hear what other people dream about. I’m in luck here, because for all the ways in which coronavirus has inhibited everyone, there are a few new freedoms – pandemic exemptions from the normal rules – and one of them is leeway to talk through corona dreams.
However tangled up they are with the rolling apocalyptic nightmare that is our daily national and international news, debating dreams does offer a bit of an escape, or at least a different way into talking about the state we’re in. Once shared with me, other people’s interesting dreams are secrets never to be told. Mine might be interesting to me, but to anyone else they are just variations on a theme of anxiety.
The most interesting, and glamorous, anxiety dreams are the ones filmed, grim as his methods were, by Alfred Hitchcock, and North by Northwest is the best. The title alludes to another dramatic anxiety dream and all of the stuff of nightmares is there: disorientation and confusion, mistaken identity and failure to communicate, pursuit and entrapment, fear of falling. But with a happily ever after ending! No dream of mine would ever get that far through the plot. I wouldn’t even have made it to Mount Rushmore – I’d have got stuck, and come unstuck, at the moment when Cary Grant has to compose a note, inside a monogrammed matchbook, to Eva Marie Saint, and then get it to her by half throwing, half flicking it over a balcony. I’d still be there, crossing out words and having to look for another matchbook to write in, Eva Marie and the baddies having long departed the scene.
Untethered and trapped at the same time: it might be boring, but it’s the perfect pandemic anxiety dream.
Things to remember: the first springtime run; earning the Easter break; a glimpse of the after time
Things to forget: riots in the time of coronavirus; the unbearable loudness of the big tv; the unbearable quietness of being confined inside