These traditions aren’t for people like us – Saadat Hasan Manto
I wasn’t the only whore in Rawalpindi, but if “they” (those who write things) wanted one to remember, I’d like to imagine it’d be me.
My name is Alina and I lived in a small gully just past the transformer bazaar. You know the jalebi chowk, in New Shakraltown? Where a gas station stands opposite the decades-old seller of fresh-made sweets? Make a right there. After two more lefts and another right, you’d find my abode above the sign for the milk shop. It was an old city. One where you could leave a book on the countertop and write your name in its newly settled dust by morning. My Dadi’s parents held farms not more than an hour’s drive from there.
Now, the blocks of effusively cramped three-story houses threatened to overtake even those far fields. The tiny streets expanded in every direction, bordered by highways and loud maze-like bazaars. A beautiful menagerie of noise and pollution. But don’t think this (even for a second!) a tragedy. Some houses were poor, yes, but we made do.
Inside is no pigsty either! My small apartment, in a widow’s house, was of ample size. A single room with brown-red couches, and a charpai tucked into one corner. Blankets filled with all the artwork of a Mughal palace. On the walls hung small canvasses of metal and cloth, inscribed with all the names of God. Paint peeling from a few walls here and there. Ambivalent lighting casting the room in comfort. One end, a kitchen, with all the spices needed for any dish. The front door was metal, with raised patterns forming twisting stems and rusty flowers.
Once, the day started earlier than usual. I could hear the rooster cawing in the distance, and then the one responding next door. The many voices erupting from the dusty small city streets.
Sometimes, folks came by early in the day to acquire my services. On that day, one such man, a young man, knocked on my door as I was just putting chai on the stovetop. He was youngish, a few years older than me, but still only around 26 or 27.
I chatted with him a little. Gave general well-wishes. And then we went into the bedroom. We removed our clothes, both bearing the same slight level of reluctance, baring the same dark skin. He grabbed my breast, and we lay together.
If a man were telling my story perhaps he’d pause now to tell detailed imagery of my sexual character. Use amply fleshy vocabulary and curvaceous sentence structure. But I’ll just suggest you picture whatever you imagine to be the most luscious woman in your heart; there you go, that’s perfect, exactly what I looked like.
We finished, and after washing up, he began to get dressed. He put on his pants, and before he reached for his shirt, I asked him, “Won’t you stay a little longer?”
He looked a little confused at the suggestion, so I repeated myself: “Stay for a bit, if you don’t mind.”
I reflected momentarily that it was odd that he came to me to satisfy his needs, rather than a wife. Or a lover if his family were the richer type. My uncle often said that the only thing separating a liberal and a conservative was that the liberal was richer; I didn’t really care for politics.
The man wasn’t altogether unattractive and not being altogether unattractive was all you really needed to get yourself a wife. He paused, shirtless, and I looked at his chest to see if his nipples could reveal any details that his lips refused to give. They remained silent.
I asked the question of most visitors to my home. It was unprofessional, sure. There were better whores and better saints in the city. But could you blame me? I couldn’t bear the silence that a word’s end left behind.
In any case, the man said he had to get to work, paid and then left. His clothes all on his person, he didn’t forget a scarf or sock. The quiet, then, settled in the room like a visitor from out of town. I sat back down on my bed. There was a map on the wall whose placement I didn’t quite like. I thought it might be better by the doorway. I remembered that I also had a poster in the back-closet. One I had been meaning to put up for a while.
I didn’t really understand people. Nothing they did ever seemed to make sense. Once, I watched a Bombay TV show, one of the new Netflix ones, with queer folk and even Muslims. I kept thinking about how none of the characters did things that made sense, always loving one person and kissing another; never saying exactly what they mean. Later, I figured it’s just the thing about people, they just did things that don’t make sense.
Now, I considered going around town, talking to the shopkeepers (I knew who the kinder ones were by now). Or calling my American cousin, Mariam, who didn’t particularly enjoy talking to me. But she answered my calls, so I talked to her often. As I raised the phone to dial her up, I felt tired, and decided against it. I went to lie down for a bit instead.
But my rest was rudely interrupted by a knock at the door. I sat up, taking one leg off the charpai and then the other. I leaned my head down, and my hair fell around me. Another knock. I came down and found the bangle seller, who had come by to put bangles on my wrists.
I had asked her to come by yesterday, as my cousin’s shadi was in a week. Our family was relatively traditional, so the shadi would be a brief affair. Not more than an hour or two. Longer weddings are too showy.
“Wouldn’t want to risk the nazar of others,” my Uncle told me.
I halfway considered not going to the wedding. I was beginning to feel as though my family had learned a new language and made the events of other planets the sole topic of their conversation.
The woman had brown hair dyed henna-orange at the edges and wore a simple shalwar-kameez. She poured oil in her hands and rubbed them together. She massaged my hands to fit the churian.
She rubbed oil over my hands and wrist. Her wet fingers danced around my limb. I tried to focus on something else. Tried to wonder what Mariam was doing, so far away. But I could only think about how nice this moment was.
There was nothing particularly special about it, it was just an average day, average preparations for an everyday wedding. All things I had done a hundred times before. I was used to the inconsequential touches of the bangle seller. But I think the world was beginning to weigh on me the way the world has a tendency of doing. And so, every gesture of the lady’s fingers on my wrist, was felt all the more deeply.
The lady’s eyes were blank, working an artist’s absent and precise movements. She lifted my hand to massage the knuckle now. She applied pressure to the linkage on my thumb; it was a little painful. My heart ached. She worked my half-coarse and slender fingers. She pushed on the knuckle just below my index with her thumb. I felt myself choking a little, with her hands around mine. I wanted her to keep them there. My eyes were weak, heavy like mountaintops.
“Is this what it’s like to be old?” I asked her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
I paused. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” I immediately regretted asking; of course she would, and I would have to spend time preparing something.
“No,” she said. She slid the bangles over my naram wrists, one at a time.
Work finished; she gathered her things while I counted the money to pay her. She left, with the clanging of the metal door. Again, the same silent guest made himself at home. Though I thought his presence was not so bad this time.
I warmed myself some milk and sat down on the carpet. As I sipped the warm milk, I closed my eyes. The last of the sun’s light faded from the world, and the night-air floated in through an open-window. A sparrow (having lost his pocket watch and not knowing the time) gave the last calls of the day.
It’s hard for people like us, you know, the sad ones. What are we to do? I thought about my cousin; how she lived in faraway country. She told me how she could wrap the goras around her finger there, so simply! How they must have looked at her, those Americans. How they must have taken her in with their big American eyes.
I’m sure the intimacy felt more real out there. I heard you could even buy real love in that rich country. Maybe I could go there. I closed my eyes and considered the possibilities faithfully.
Huzaifa Malik is a Pakistani-American poet and writer raised across multiple countries. He is studying Comparative Literature at The Pennsylvania State University but is also still trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. He enjoys writing and sharing poetry that presents his emotions honestly and fully, exploring themes of love and immigrant identity. His favorite poets include Agha Shahid Ali and Li-Young Lee. His work is also forthcoming in Kalliope.
Follow Huzaifa on Instagram: @huzaifapoetry