The Other Side – First Light

She walked down the stairs, floating past the mosaic of photographs on the wall. Something about the house seemed off, unfamiliar. She got a glass of water from the kitchen, unsettled. The walls were the same pale green that she remembered, but the cabinets…Had they always been white? Weren’t they green, like the walls? They were shinier than she remembered too. 

“Ammi!” She called out, but only silence came back at her. She frowned, came out of the kitchen, heading for the stairs. The house was dark, shadows creeping across the floor and climbing the walls. She went up the stairs, stopped on the fifth step, examining the pictures on the wall. When had her mother put these up? There she was, with her sisters, playing tea in their old house. There was her parents’ wedding picture, the whole family at their cousin’s wedding. And the individual portraits, she didn’t remember those. She leaned in to examine her own picture, staring at the blue shirt she was wearing. When had this been taken? She couldn’t recall ever owning a shirt in that particular shade of blue either. 

She squinted at herself.

The girl in the picture moved, and Saraab jumped out of her skin.

She bolted upright in her bed, breathing heavily, her pillow drenched in sweat. A dream, it was just a dream. 

She took a deep breath, pushed back the bed covers and swung her legs to the floor. She hung her head, recited the Ayat-ul-Kursi in her head, her eyes tightly shut. With an effort, she opened them and cautiously looked around, afraid that, like her dream, the room would be unfamiliar, alien. But it all looked normal, softly outlined by the light from the window over her bed. She looked out the clear glass that had been put in a few hours ago, blinked. 

The window right opposite her was lit.

She scrambled up to the head of her bed, pressed her face to the glass. The house right behind them wasn’t empty any more. The second floor back room had someone there. She could see the silhouette of a woman through the backlit curtains, moving in and out of the frame. The rest of the house still looked dark. Saraab’s eyes swept down to the house’s back alley, and sure enough, she saw a plastic bucket, empty boxes, a wiper leaning against the back wall, where, earlier in the day, there had been nothing. 

The window across from her was little more than ten feet away, the house one of a row of identical, contractor-built houses in a small neighbourhood of North Karachi. Their house stood in the middle of the block, the homes so close together that the builder had used opaque glass in the back windows of each house. It gave them privacy, but blocked out the light to the back rooms. 

Her father realised that, so he had the glass changed in Saraab’s room. The window frame had been stuck to the sill from dried paint since they moved in. They had to chip the paint off to unstick the frames, eventually breaking the window’s frame to get it completely off from the sill. Earlier this afternoon, a workman had replaced the glass, added an extra frame for mosquito netting, and Saraab had a window she could actually open.

She looked back up. The curtains had been pulled back across the alley. She could see through to the other room, slightly distorted by the patterned sameness of the mosquito netting. She could see a portion of a bed, a side table with a lamp. The lamp was on, bathing the room in a pale orange glow. For a brief second, the woman crossed the lamp, and Saraab moved back. She clamped a hand over her mouth, peering cautiously back from behind her curtain. The woman was pulling on a t-shirt over her nakedness. Her hair was long and silky, flowing down her back like water as she pulled it out of the neck of her t-shirt. Her legs were bare.

Saraab slid down on to her bed, suddenly ashamed of her own voyeurism. It felt wrong. 

She pulled the covers over herself, resolutely shutting her eyes. The brief peeping Tom moment had wiped the nightmare out of her mind. She took a deep breath and let herself sink into the bed, wondering when, in the few hours between the window installer leaving and her nightmare, someone had managed to silently move in next door.

***

“Saraab, Sobia, Sana! Come and help. Your father will be home in a few minutes.” Ammi was in the kitchen, expertly rolling out chapatis next to the stove. The three girls had just walked into the house. Sana gave her sisters a resigned look. 

“We’ve just walked in, for God’s sake,” she mumbled. “Can we take a few minutes to relax first?”

Saraab pulled off her dupatta, unbuttoning the burqa she was wearing. She called out to her mother as she pulled off the burqa. “Coming, Ammi. We’re just putting our burqas away.”

The other two pulled off their layers, neatly folding their own burqas. Saraab handed hers to Sana. “Put this on my bed, will you? I’ll go help Ammi.”

Sobia and Sana ran upstairs, dropped their bags and burdens, came running back. Quickly and efficiently, they prepared lunch. They set the table just as their father walked in the front door. He came home the same time every day from the store that he owned. Along with the sale of his family home, profits from the store were good enough for a down payment on their brand new house—a distinct step up from their two-bedroom apartment. They were in a middle-class suburb of Karachi now, in a three-bedroom house that had a tiny front yard and driveway.

Lunch was rushed—the girls had homework, and their father would need to get back to the store—so conversation was limited.

“Someone moved in behind us.” Saraab swished a piece of chapati across her plate, collecting a generous amount of the spicy daal that she loved. “They have a daughter, from what I could tell.”

Her mother looked surprised. “Behind us? I haven’t heard anything. The house still seems quiet to me.”

“I saw her last night, from my new window.”

“It still looks empty.”

Saraab shrugged. “Well, maybe they’re quiet people, which will be nice.”

Ammi smiled. “I’ll send some dessert to them today. Welcome them to the neighbourhood. People aren’t very friendly here.” She was used to socialising with neighbours. She sighed. “I miss that. This house is too quiet when you’re all out.”

Her husband laughed at that. “You’ll make friends here too. Don’t worry so much.”

“Oh, I don’t. It’s just, I’m used to noise. Quiet neighbours aren’t always a blessing, you know.”

The girls rolled their eyes. Sobia laughed. “It’s nice to have some peace, Ammi. In the flat, the bell would be ringing all day long.”

“Mostly because your friends would be coming round all day long.”

“Saraab.” Her father was frowning. “Saraab, keep your curtains closed. If you can see this girl from your window, they can see you.” It had just occurred to him, obviously.

“Yes, Baba. I saw her at night, in any case, and the lights in my room were off.”

“Even so.” He cleaned his plate with a little relish, but the black frown hadn’t cleared from his brow. “I should have kept the opaque glass in. These houses, they’re too close together.”

Saraab looked up in alarm. “I’ll keep the curtains closed, Baba. I promise.” She turned to her mother. “I have to tell you about this new girl in my class.” She changed the subject, determined to move the topic away from her window. 

It worked. The younger girls, both in the same all-girl’s college where Saraab was a newly-minted associate professor, had stories of their own to tell. It kept the conversation during and after lunch well off the new neighbours until Baba left for the store. 

After lunch, Ammi looked out back and remembered that she was going to go send a plate of food to welcome them to the neighbourhood.

“Saraab, take this to the new neighbours, will you? I’m going to rest for a little while.” She put some gulab jamun and halwa in a plate, covered it with another plate and handed it to her daughter. Saraab nodded.

“I’ll just get my burqa.” 

She walked up the stairs, paused on the fifth step. The wall to her right was bare, and for a split second, she remembered her dream and the pictures that had covered these walls, and she felt a chill breeze skim across the nape of her neck. 

It was just a dream, she reminded herself, forcing her feet to move. Just a dream.