The Other Side – Meeting

It was raining again. 

A lamp on the bedside table was on. The wave receded and silence blanketed the room, an oppressive, crushing silence that weighed on her nerves.

He was sitting on the chair by the wall-mounted desk where she graded papers and wrote her lesson plans.

She forced herself to turn her head, to look at him. He was beautiful, with thick lashes like a girl’s, winged eyebrows over dark eyes and a straight patrician nose. His elegant body was relaxed, long legs stretched out in front of him, his narrow hands folded casually over his ribs.

She let out a breath, swallowed, but couldn’t speak.

He seemed to see that, because he smiled, gently. “You have questions.”

Her throat remained paralysed. She nodded.

He raised a slender hand and pointed to the window. She looked out at the rain that was streaming down the glass. “Did you ever wonder how it was that the house behind you had the same clear glass window as yours? The builder had put in opaque glass in all the houses.”

She stared out the window, wondering how she had missed that. 

“Or perhaps, you should have asked how it’s raining in October in Karachi. When was the last time that happened?” There was a smile in his deep voice. “The devil, you see, is in the details.”

Shocked, she found her voice. “Are you the devil?”

He was startled, laughed in some astonishment. “Oh dear, no. I’m just a, a facilitator.”

“A facilitator of what?”

“Of windows.”

Her head jerked to one side; she looked at the window, a deep frown carving itself into her brow.

“Into an alternate life.”

“What?”

“You’ve wondered, haven’t you, what it would be like to be born in a different house, to different parents? To be free to do what you want, with whom you want, when you want? To dance with a man who looks at you with desire?”

“N-no.” She stammered, her throat closing up with shame. She couldn’t admit it, not to him.

“Saraab.” he said. His voice was gentle again and she shut her eyes.

“GO AWAY.” Her voice was loud and she looked fearfully at the door.

“They can’t hear you. They’re not with us.”

Saraab stiffened, and her voice wavered as she said, “Not with us? What have you done to them?”

He put his hands. “Nothing, nothing. I just meant that we’re in a different plane right now. You don’t get to see what you’ve seen when your feet are planted firmly on the ground.”

It almost felt like an insult to her. She frowned at him, and said, “This is a dream? This isn’t really happening, is it? I am going crazy!”

“Do you really want to know the mechanics of what’s happening, Saraab?” he asked, politely. “Those aren’t the questions you had for me.” She looked at his face, at his eyes, and fear shuddered through her. She suddenly felt stripped and bare, examined and watched, and somehow, known. She ran through the Ayat-ul-Kursi in her head, took a deep breath and pulled her scattered brain together. 

“Why?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“Why would you do this? What do you get from this ‘facilitation’?”

“What I get is not relevant. What have you gotten out of it?”

What, indeed, except a guaranteed tenure in an insane asylum? “Nothing.” She spat the word out with a little heat.

He tut-tutted with a patronising shake of his head. “Come now, Saraab. I gave you a glimpse into an alternate life that you can step into, now, tonight, if you say the word. Which side are you going to fall on? The liberal, unburdened life of the girl in the window, or the responsible life of the oldest daughter in a conservative household?”

Her eyes widened again. Without realising it, she had relaxed, her body slipping out of the defensive crouch into her habitual cross-legged pose on the bed. “You mean, I can choose? I can be that girl?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“In a second, if you say yes.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then, “You really haven’t shown me anything, though, have you? A girl dancing in the window and wearing jeans tells me nothing about her. Who is she? Who are her family? What does she do? What will she become? And, who are you?”

“I’m her companion, her friend, her lover.”

“And the rest?”

“You’ve seen enough on TV and in movies and with the girls you teach at your college to know what kind of life I’m offering. Do you want it?”

“You’re crazy, and this is a, some sort of, I don’t know, silly fantasy.”

His expression didn’t seem to change, but she felt a shift of mood, a seriousness that descended upon the room. He said, “Fantasy? Are you sure? Maybe this is the fantasy, this life in this house with your sisters. Maybe you’re finally getting a glimpse of reality, and it’s not in here.” He pointed towards the window. “Maybe it’s out there.”

“You’re deliberately confusing me.”

He sighed. “My point is, that life is as real as this one, and you have the unique, one-in-8-billion opportunity to step over to the other side. Are you going to take it?”

“I need to know more.”

He shook his head. “No, you see the surface, just as you see the surface with everyone you’ve ever envied, or aspired to be like. That’s all you have to make your choice.”

She protested. “That’s not enough. You can’t judge a life on a glimpse through a window.” She nervously pulled a corner of the bed cover through her hand, compulsively smoothing it out immediately after.

“And yet, everyone does it. Everyone. People do it to you all the time.”

She stopped fidgeting, stared at him.

He waved a hand at the swathe of silky black hair that was tumbling down her shoulders. “You hide your beauty under black fabric and when you walk down the street, women like the one across the alley look at you and think how backward you must be. They’re thinking that you’re unenlightened, repressed, oppressed; that you’re a product of a mindset that wants to travel back fourteen hundred years in time and live in a desert riding camels; that you reject the joys and beauty of life by dismissing art and music and poetry as ‘pagan’.” Saraab frowned blackly at his description, recognising the unfairness of it all; the hijab and burqa didn’t define her. He went on. “And you, you’re constantly judging women who wear sleeveless shirts and work with men. You think they’re Jezebels and have no morals. You think they are the cause of all ills in our society; that God’s wrath is visited on Pakistan because they’ve shed their instincts for modesty. It doesn’t occur to you that the more you judge them, the more you push them to another extreme, does it?” Her mouth dropped open and he seemed to derive some satisfaction from her stupefied expression. “You’re two sides of the same coin, Saraab. The goal should not be to live on one side, but to meet in the middle.”

She looked at him with a tinge of bitterness. “You’re not offering me the middle, though, are you?”

“I can’t offer you the middle, my dear. I can only show you the two sides, and let you pick one.”

She stared out of the window for a long moment, watching the rain stream down the glass and pool onto the sill behind the mosquito netting. She was tempted, dearly tempted to step across the divide. “Does she have sisters?”

“Hmm?”

“On the other side, does she have sisters who hang out with her? Walk to school with her? Does her mother make lemon pickle at home? Does she sit down to meals with her family every day?”

He shrugged, a little impatiently. “She has sisters, but they respect their privacy and individual needs and desires. The women in that house,” he waved at the window, “are self-sufficient, and expected to make their own way in life. They’re expected to have careers, and the decision to marry or not is theirs, not their parents’. Does that help?”

It didn’t. It only confused her further. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What if I want the middle?”

“Then you need to talk to someone else.”

“Who?”

He ignored the question. “If you don’t take my offer, Saraab, you’ll never see me again. The ‘window’ for this offer is the next few minutes.”

She felt the pressure mount and wondered to herself, why was she hesitating? She could have the freedom to do what she wanted, have a career other than teaching, take off the burqa permanently. No more serving tea and clearing up late at night, no more taking responsibility for her sisters. No possibility of a husband who would allow her nothing more than to have children and care for them. But also, probably, no more late nights with her sisters, no family meals, she’d have to find her own husband, maybe even support herself. What if she couldn’t? Couldn’t find a husband, or a good job? Couldn’t make her own way in life? What if she was all alone, just her and the beautiful man before her? What if she couldn’t live up to his expectations? What if she never saw her family again? What if she grew old without anyone next to her? What if she failed at the dazzling, shiny life that the elite lived? Or worse, what if she succeeded at it, and come Judgement Day, what would she say to God? What excuses would she give for giving up her modesty? For choosing a liberal life when she read, every time she read the Quran, that the path to Paradise lay in subservience to God? To family? What if all that awaited her, in return for a few years of freedom in this life, was a lifetime of fiery chains in the next? Suddenly gripped with a deep, abiding fear of the unknown, she blurted out, “No.”

The gentle thrum of rain outside the window stopped, the room was blue with moonlight, and the lamp off. 

He was gone.

She stared in deep consternation at the empty chair. “No.” She said, again, quietly. Slumped down on the bed, slid down towards the floor. “No, no, no.” She put her hands up to her face. “No, what have I done?” She looked at the desk again, the empty chair. And her voice rose. “No, come back, I didn’t know what I was saying. Wait. Where are you?” 

You’ll have to talk to someone else.

Who else? Who could she talk to? What did it mean? 

She cried.