thirteenth june
number twenty
mehrunnisa, at home in london
i love this time of the year, when the shadows equal the length of the objects late into the evening. the sun is rosy hued and even when it takes leave of the sky, it leaves behind blueness that works its way to inkiness. didion has a wonderful description of this time that both precedes and follows the summer solstice in ‘blue nights’. it is an immersive experience, one where “you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at chartres, or that of the cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. the french called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” to the english it was “the gloaming.” the very word “gloaming” reverberates, echoes— the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.”
the sound of summer can sometimes be loud and obnoxious. here in london, in the part that i call home, the sound of chatter and birdsong competes with ear splitting motorbikes and cars whose silencers have been ripped out. music spills out of convertible cars and from the odd boom box of a cyclist. sometimes, the jingle of the ice-cream van drifts through the window, although it is rare these days because the heat itself is enough of an advertisement for brisk business. the balconies are busy throughout the day with residents eating, working and sunning themselves. the pavements have been colonised by tables.
it feels remarkably normal.
a feeling that is perhaps amplified by an enforced leave taken from the news. a small luxury in a time when the world does not offer that respite.
this is what i want to remember this week. omair’s homecoming. deliciously sweet and cold mangoes. ali’s mango ice-cream that took me back to the sweltering summer days of my youth in pakistan. mango is the flavour of my childhood holidays in lahore. we would get scoops of mango ice-cream from rahat bakery when i would stay with my phoopo at her house in cantt.the consistency would vary. sometimes, impeccably smooth, at others slightly crystallised. the square tubs of polka’s soft scoop were excellent too. ali’s is perfect - smooth and creamy, and the perfect marriage of mangoes and cream. [in case you are wondering, he delivers to north and north west london. his ice-cream is called blush].
a lahori summer can be intensely unbearable especially during the days when the air is thick with heat and will not stir. loadshedding (scheduled and surprise power blackouts) were a standard of that time. the memory of icy things is almost always tangled with this. we spent many evenings and nights on the lawn, surrounded by the haze of coils that were lit to keep mosquitoes at bay. phoopo would often squat flies with a fly swatter and newspapers would be used as manual fans.
it is not possible to eat mangoes in a dignified manner, except for at my maternal grandparents, where even the unruly fruits of summer were tamed. daddy would buy mangoes by the dozen which were served peeled with a jugful of milk pak cream. it is a point of discussion on my father’s side of the family. my cousins still tease me about it, while running their teeth against the skin of a sliced mango to release it into their mouth. omair would much rather have a peeled and cubed one, but will occasionally eat them the punjabi way. his favourite way though is as a milkshake. the kind that is equal parts mango and ice with just enough milk to loosen it.
summer is full of the kind of fruits that are sensuous. fleshy peaches that perfume the air around the fruit bowl and are best eaten leaning over the sink. arms and elbows sticky with the juice that run from it. berries that must be eaten swiftly because they spoil quickly. the heat amplifies their fragility which explains why i came home to a bruise coloured stain on my cloth bags and linen trousers after having bought blackberries for which i refused plastic packaging. and how can i forget the sun warmed cherries and strawberries that i had in m’s back garden alongside cold glasses of sparkling water and delicious conversation.
this second summer of the pandemic is yet another way to measure time. transitioning to it from a wintery spring has been full of joy.
things to remember: blue nights, the feeling of being reunited with omair, a good night’s sleep
things to forget: the red list of countries, variants trumping vaccines, living through a pandemic
Jenny, at home, with Mehrunnisa in London
It’s already the second summer of the pandemic. How did I get here so fast and why has it taken me so long? It’s the third summer since I came back and I still haven’t reclaimed my home city, where I imagined I’d be spending most of my time by now.
Getting there from here is easy, in theory. Not even 40 minutes on the train along the coast, looking out at Belfast Lough and watching the fast ferry to Cairnryan glide in or out of the port. It’s great in the daytime, but the last train leaves before midnight, so in some ways the easy way out is to overlook the carbon emissions and take the car.
I also imagined I’d be better at driving by now, but every trip into the city still involves days of fretting and increasingly frantic route planning. Last week I arranged to go to a small pandemic picnic in one of Belfast’s largest and most accessible parks. “Oh yes, lovely”, I said to the suggestion, and immediately came out in a rash.
On the day, a friend drew me maps of alternative routes and places to park. I set off relatively optimistically, only to get stuck before the first roundabout on the ring road, where someone (not me!) had lightly biffed a taxi. On the other side of that, I swept the supermarket, panic buying snacks and drinks in a way that made the cashier who verified the drinks purchase openly laugh at me. Then I got caught up in a queue for the drive-in KFC.
It wasn’t an auspicious start, but I was all right for a while and even more than all right for a short time. The B-road route is a climb up a hill away from Bangor and then a descent down the other side into Belfast. The reveal of the city’s imprint below was pretty spectacular and I was in my own car going under my own steam to see new friends on a sunny evening in a beautiful park. I couldn’t get much luckier than that in a pandemic.
About five minutes after that, on my way into Belfast from the east, I turned too early and took a detour around a one-way system, rejoining the right road just in time to get in the wrong lane. I was too late for the next turn, which meant that I had to carry on and join the one road I’d planned the whole route to avoid. As I carried on further, I failed to recognise any of the features of what should have been a familiar way, though I did belatedly clock that I had managed to cross the River Lagan twice – two more times than should have been necessary.
Eventually I swung off the main road to find a place to regroup. In what I thought was a dead-end street, I ground the gears turning the car, only to see the main gate of the park on the other side of the road. It took another quarter of an hour of gingerly driving around to settle on somewhere to leave the car, before I found my way back to the park, working out on the way that the street where I’d shown off my three-point turn was not, in fact, a dead end and was, in fact, on of the streets where my friend had suggested I park in the first place.
I got there in the end, and it was worth it. I found my people, and we wondered why it hadn’t occurred to us to meet across a picnic table in the before-time summers. On the way back, I crossed a third bridge, between the Big Fish and the Beacon of Hope, and fluffed every lane change on the bypass, but I got there in the end – and if that’s my pandemic story, I’ll be very lucky.
Things to remember: lavender plants thriving on the doorstep, articles accumulating on the website, the anniversary of Grenfell
Things to forget: gouging my heels with new trainers, these wakeful nights, how fragile my grip is on anything