آنکھیں بند کرتے وقت آپ کون سا رنگ دیکھتے ہیں؟
What colors do you see when you close your eyes? I asked my fourth-grade students.
جامنی ، پیلے ، نیلے!
Purple, yellow, blue! They shouted back.
I use to teach Art and English in Lahore, Pakistan from grades 3–7.
I can’t help but think of the many faces of the children who lit up in smiles, laughter, and happiness. As I read Maya Angelou’s “Heart of a Woman”, my love for creation comes to mind. My love for words and art comes alive and I seek deep inside my heart for the true subtle moments I keep locked inside.
One of the many is my long afternoons teaching children, and some are the melancholy scent of roses while visiting my grandfather’s grave. I leap back into time and hear the Persian tales from my grandmother. I hear her crisp, sweet but loud tone reciting Surah Al-Fatiha (The opening).
As I would lay in her arms, she would tell me of Persian tales like Laila Majnun, The conference of the birds by Attar of Nishapur, and of course her own story of her experiences fleeing to Pakistan in 1947. The partition. Her stories of the partition lead me to read many literary authors such as Muhammad Iqbal, Sadat Hussein Manto and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
I would read Jawab-e-Shikwa and ponder at the complaints of Muhammad Iqbal followed by his answers of God.
I would visualize Toba Tek Singh as Manto had described his profound rage and regret throughout his story.
My long afternoons laying on our charpai (a traditional woven bed made from date leaves and natural fibers) on the rooftop were spent in awe, and as the sun beamed onto my eyes, I closed them shut, listening to the crow’s caw, letting Faiz’ words spiral into my mind.
“The door of my sorrowing house opens against its will; here come my visitors. Here comes evening, to spread out before her the carpet of nostalgia — ”
Occasionally, on Wednesday mornings, my father and I would pay a visit to my grandfather. We would stop by to purchase rose petals to sprinkle unto his grave. We would recite Surah Al-Fatiha and make a dua’a for his soul to live on to the eternal realm. I would often pay more attention to my father’s emotions, I would see tears in the corners of his eyes refusing to be let out. He would kiss my grandfather's gravestone and off he would go. I would stand there dumbfounded, listening to the parrots, savoring the lingering incense and rose water, still reciting the beautiful words of the Qur’an in my heart.
Ray Bradbury wrote, “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful out.”
Days would fly by, some in agony, some in harmony while the words in Urdu, Arabic, Pashto, Persian, and English were all little pieces to a puzzle in my life. As I taught them in classrooms, as I heard them from my grandmother, as I read them on my rooftop, and as I recited them in my heart. Gradually, I started to bind them together and painted images of my adolescence, I was filled with memoirs of the people who were closest to me. I learned the poetry of my grandfather who once wrote about the true essence of a beautiful flower he adored. “
اوئے گلچین ای اجل تجھ سی کیا ندانی ہو پھول وو تھورا گلچان بھار ورانی ھوئی—
Oh plumeria, what foolishness have I done? Picking the flower which placed all gardens in solitude
“O patron of the poor, what would the world say if we return empty-handed from your door?”
While little boys from the madrasa giggled and jumped into puddles. The aroma of petrichor, the sounds of love, and the echoes of an ongoing war inside of troubled homes would cast a spell in the tight alleyways which could only be broken through by the Adhan. The call of prayer.
Hayya ‘alas-Salah (Come to prayer)
Hayya ‘alal-Falah (Come to success)
And as many rushed to prayer in dhikr, And as time went by, Bradbury became Iqbal, Bulleh Shah became Shakespeare, and daffodils blossomed into the pleasant jasmines under the moonlight. Though these few moments were not at a standstill, and though life sped at the fast pace of a mini suzuki, I embellished the rare emeralds of my land into the corners of my heart.
Our becoming is truly short-lived, and as Maya Angelou’s introduction came to an end, the moments I ventured out to seek in the very depths of my memory left me with a beautiful journey.
As I leaped back into the present, from Bradbury to Iqbal, I opened a lock to another door to leap through.
This time, it wasn’t just words.
