To Lahore, With Love

It took me exact two years to process the fact that I have been to Lahore. Once.

Yes. I mean, kafi zada hougaya hai right? I think this is what happens when you fall in love with a city at a very young age. I fell in love with Lahore when I was hardly 10 or 11. For me, it has always been this far distant place I could not travel to on my own and that made it even more beautiful. This is how human mind works, the more distant something is, the more beautiful it becomes.

However, that changed when I travelled to Lahore in March, 2018. While I am writing this it looks both like a dream and a reality.

So, I would like you to time travel with me now:

March, 2018:

I was scrolling through facebook when I saw LUMS’ Literary Society’s post about their literary festival, slated from 31st March – 1st April. I was like, its Lahore, itna dur hei, I won’t be able to go but then I do not know mere dimag mein kia aya, I texted my friends and asked them if they want to go with me, we can get sponsorship from the university and then there will not be any trouble. For someone, (who has never left the city) to go to another city with her friends, was a great deal. A teacher did accompany us, but you get what I mean, right? Khair, it is a long story about how we had to go back and forth for signatures and approval and khuwari – in the end, we got the sponsorship AND the approval; Lahore was now waiting for me. [Bakiyon ka wait bhe kiya houga, par this is my story] I am a huge believer of omens, signs, symbols, so when I think in retrospect, it feels like it was destined to happen. I just had to play my part.

We left for Lahore at 6:30 am in the morning. The journey was beautiful and I slept adha time, truth be told.🌝

And then we reached LUMS/LUMSU, all that jazz.

The weather was beautiful, neither hot, nor too cold. We sat, ate, roamed around, wrote poems, essays, short stories (for our competitions) and then sat some more in the lahori-march-sun.

In the evening, we left for the mall, because kafi tourist feels and because we were there only for two days and one night, it was not possible to go to the proper tourist places, so liberty books was our only option.

Okay here is the thing that I want to talk about; when I look back, the one thing that fills me up with joy is the fact that both of us were only 19 year olds, roaming around Lahore, a city alien to me, on our own and making memories. At that time, we thought “wow! we are having so much fun” but in reality we were collecting life long memories. We had food [kafi zada hi kha lia tha] and even got to meet Umar Akmal! 😀 {yes, sure}

Can we now talk about how after obsessing over a bookstore for years [reminds me of “You’ve got mail”] and ordering books twice a month, I was finally able to fangirl about liberty books while.standing.in.liberty.books

We spent so much time there that we got hungry again and had to eat.

And witnessed lahore ka d’ubta hua suraj.

This is the only sunset I got to experience, we left for Islamabad the next day but I think this is all I want to talk about right now. This day. 31st March, 2018.

The takeaway from this story for you is that we all love something; a book, a place, a painting, a poem or a city more than other things and it becomes a part of who we are. I now feel like it is okay to dream and it does not matter whether your dream is small or big or crazy or not so crazy – all that matters is that YOU have a dream. Dreams can drive us mad, yes, but they also sustain us. Lahore might not be a big deal for many people, they might find it meh or “oh i have been there many times’ but it is a big deal for me and always will be. And I wanted to publish this before I permanently move to that city, which I will very soon. Dreams are dreams and you can not put a label or price on them.

I want to end this story with a poem by Agha Shahid Ali:

Snow on the Desert

“Each ray of sunshine is seven minutes old,”   
Serge told me in New York one December night.

“So when I look at the sky, I see the past?”   
“Yes, Yes,” he said. “especially on a clear day.”

On January 19, 1987,
as I very early in the morning
drove my sister to Tucson International,

suddenly on Alvernon and 22nd Street   
the sliding doors of the fog were opened,

and the snow, which had fallen all night, now   
sun-dazzled, blinded us, the earth whitened

out, as if by cocaine, the desert’s plants,   
its mineral-hard colors extinguished,   
wine frozen in the veins of the cactus.

                     *   *   *

The Desert Smells Like Rain: in it I read:   
The syrup from which sacred wine is made

is extracted from the saguaros each   
summer. The Papagos place it in jars,

where the last of it softens, then darkens   
into a color of blood though it tastes

strangely sweet, almost white, like a dry wine.   
As I tell Sameetah this, we are still

seven miles away. “And you know the flowers   
of the saguaros bloom only at night?”

We are driving slowly, the road is glass.   
“Imagine where we are was a sea once.

Just imagine!” The sky is relentlessly   
sapphire, and the past is happening quickly:

the saguaros have opened themselves, stretched   
out their arms to rays millions of years old,

in each ray a secret of the planet’s   
origin, the rays hurting each cactus

into memory, a human memory
for they are human, the Papagos say:

not only because they have arms and veins   
and secrets. But because they too are a tribe,

vulnerable to massacre. “It is like
the end, perhaps the beginning of the world,”

Sameetah says, staring at their snow-sleeved   
arms. And we are driving by the ocean

that evaporated here, by its shores,
the past now happening so quickly that each

stoplight hurts us into memory, the sky   
taking rapid notes on us as we turn

at Tucson Boulevard and drive into   
the airport, and I realize that the earth

is thawing from longing into longing and   
that we are being forgotten by those arms.

                     *   *   *

At the airport I stared after her plane   
till the window was

                      again a mirror.
As I drove back to the foothills, the fog

shut its doors behind me on Alvernon,   
and I breathed the dried seas

                      the earth had lost,
their forsaken shores. And I remembered

another moment that refers only   
to itself:

                      in New Delhi one night
as Begum Akhtar sang, the lights went out.

It was perhaps during the Bangladesh War,   
perhaps there were sirens,

                      air-raid warnings.
But the audience, hushed, did not stir.

The microphone was dead, but she went on   
singing, and her voice

                      was coming from far   
away, as if she had already died.

And just before the lights did flood her   
again, melting the frost

                      of her diamond
into rays, it was, like this turning dark

of fog, a moment when only a lost sea   
can be heard, a time

                      to recollect
every shadow, everything the earth was losing,

a time to think of everything the earth   
and I had lost, of all

                      that I would lose,   
of all that I was losing.