The Nausea of Familiarity

HAVE you ever had one of those dreams, where you realize it’s a dream half-way through – but you force yourself not to wake up a little bit longer, just so you can see how it all ends?

Every single person – whom I’ve ever told the story of how my husband and I met – responds by making that stupid face. You know which one, right? That wishful longing in their eyes, their hands tucked under their chin, cheeks trying their level best to completely obliterate their eyes altogether, smile so wide you see their lips stretched almost beyond their limits.

So please, don’t do that when you read this.

My husband and I grew up as neighbours, and please don’t congratulate me on this fact. It had nothing to do with me – my parents chose to live here. It wasn’t some serendipitous, one-in-a-million, lottery-winning, God-intervening, Universe-re-calibrating miracle. It’s chance, just like the odds of you reading this story. I don’t attribute you finding my tale to some sort of supernatural recommendation – so why would anything else be?

When I moved to this house – there was a boy named Ahad who lived next door. He was seven, I was seven. He was discovering how he couldn’t fit in with the kids around him at all – they would all tease him, call him names, the works. I was actually quite well-liked, but the frequent ass-kissing was a little too much for my liking. I was an only child, and quite pampered. He had a younger brother – and both of them are almost equally as spoilt. I guess we did quite well, parents-wise.

When I found this kid – awkward, clumsy and chubby though he was – I immediately began to ‘fall’ for his lack of charm.

I’m not entirely sure seven-year-olds know what romance is, but they do know whom they want to share their toys with. And when it goes outside the realm of logic – as the conspicuous inter-mingling of opposing genders is often considered by parents – well, then things must be serious.

What is ‘serious’, for a seven-year-old? A bit of blood on her knee because she slid on a road that was not meant for human knees to slide on? A little boy’s broken nose because he literally fell on his face, then cried loud enough for the neighbours in other houses to consider that the boy’s best friend had punched him?

None of these things mattered to me. The boy was my best friend, though life is not a competition. But he was. And that was the only ‘serious’ thing I needed to know at the time.

Or so I thought.

In retrospect, a way to gauge how a child’s development is progressing would have been helpful. If I could not have understood such ideas, perhaps someone around me could. Maybe, just maybe, someone could have warned me that not all kids think the same way.

…

My father got a job in a different city when I was nine. His profession involved moving around, and I still suspect that it was more about ‘changing jobs’ then it was about ‘being re-located' - but that is a story for another day.

I sat in front of my now-ten-year-old-best-friend (his birthday had been the previous week, and had involved all of three ‘friends’ being there – the other two, I observed, had parents who were suspiciously close to the birthday boy’s) and gave him the news.

At first, it seemed like Ahad was going to cry. I waited, feeling the God-awful lump at the back of my own throat – praying that it would go down. He nodded a few times rather blankly, then – in one rather astonishingly smooth move – leapt forward and gave me a wonderfully tight squeeze.

As if he knew exactly what would make me burst out that very second. Once the waterfalls began, they took their sweet time to cease. Once they had ceased, the words I wanted to say took their sweet time to not be mixed with pathetic wailing noises.

“You’re such a loser for crying,” I began, though he had only a solitary tear that had found its way into his double chin now.

Ahad nodded, not coming up with a clever comeback. A few more moments passed. I looked around his front yard. It had memories hanging around everywhere. I’ve since noticed that cemeteries give me the same feeling – although at that time, I would have thought the comparison to be rather macabre.

“I’m going to miss you so much, Zizi,” he managed, at last. This kid was going to make sure I was completely empty by the time I got home.

“But we’ll stay in touch, right?” I said, definitely securing both first and second place in the ‘most-pathetic remark’ competition already.

“I’ll call you every chance I get. I promise.” His pinky finger came innocently towards mine. There was a brief union, and then I absolutely scurried home. I didn’t have to – we could have sat around and talked about all sorts of things. God knows we usually had nothing, yet went on for hours. But in that moment, I was rather at a loss for words.

When I did get home, I began to write a letter. It was supposed to contain all those wonderfully-crafted sentences that I should have said to him out there. The plan was to go see him one more time before I left – and to hand him over the piece of paper, and once again retreat.

As it happened, he came over that very night. I had already written what I needed to, but I realized that it would take yet more courage to hand it to him. He was with his mother – a rather nasty lady, who had always liked me – and both of them sat weirdly far from each other, sipping on mango juice, as I handed him the letter. He was a curious boy, but I had forewarned him not to read it until he got home.

As they were leaving, he turned around – looked me square in the eyes – and said, “I hope I see you sooner rather than later, Zizi.” Damn child made sure I got precious little sleep that night.

…

We kept in touch, which is an ode to our perseverance in itself. That’s because this was before the days of all the so-easy-it-must-be-a-terrible-trap-for-our-mental-health technology we have today. All we had was e-mail, and not even our own. We had to arrange for our dads’ e-mail addresses to be shared. And then we’d write all the stupid things to each other which we’d otherwise have said.

It suited me rather well, because I could think about all the things I needed to say. Indeed, he often said that I sounded more confident (I don’t think he had the vocabulary to say ‘eloquent’) as soon as I had moved away.

I told him he sounded exactly the same. And I meant it as a compliment.

We had lived together in Karachi – then I had moved away to Islamabad, while he stayed in the city where he was born and aspired to die. He told me about how he had made two close friends since I had moved away, and then told me about how he was being bullied (I asked if the two were linked). Meanwhile, I told him I could not stand most of the people around me, and was constantly on the look-out for people who would not be superficial.

If I were better with words, I would have told him I needed to find a better, deeper connection with the people I was meeting. However, even as adolescence and menarche decided I was worth both their time, I found myself feeling more and more lonely.

It is a horrible cliché to call oneself lonely when you are surrounded by people. I do not succumb to cliches often, but when I do, they feel right as rain.

When he was about fifteen, we began to talk on networks which have ultimately led to the cognitive decline of the human race.

He told me about the teacher who inspired his interest in studying Economics (I wondered – privately – how amazing an Econ teacher could be). I told him about the teacher who made me want to study World History.

He told me about the girls in his high school whom most of the guys fancied - I told him about the dude I was hanging around so much, but I did not seem to have a single romantic bone in my body that aligned itself with said dude. He told me bones did not align. It was not scientific. No shit.

On one of his later birthday parties (and he had an actual ‘party’ this time, because his parents did not have anything to do with anything), he told me he had met someone. He told me this is in that matter-of-fact, it-had-to-happen, this-is-a-rite-of-passage-for-me way that would not have annoyed me so much, had he given me some sort of an inclination that this would happen. One second, we were talking about meeting up in Islamabad soon (it had been seven years now, but we could never convince our parents to let us meet somehow), and the next – bam!

In that weird sort of way that women often react to news that they know should not bother them as much as it does, I went ‘offline’ for some time. We had progressed to one form of social media now, and I promptly went off it.

However, that did not last very long. For all he knew, I was still away – but secretly, I had done what people my age are so adept at, and so shamelessly, too. I knew everything about this girl now – and I greatly disliked her. I don’t know how I had convinced myself that I would feel better once I saw what she looked like, what she did, how she talked or dressed – but none of it made me feel any better.

After around two weeks of radio silence, I made contact with him again – only when I had gone on a hunger strike before my parents, until they had agreed to take me to Karachi (the hunger strike lasted only a few hours – and, to be quite honest, they folded only minutes before I would have).

One week later, my long legs were crammed in the ever-receding leg space of the economy class. Nearly two hours later, I was in Karachi – and in another two hours, I messaged him to come outside his house. It felt so liberating to ring the metaphorical doorbell once again, as I had done literally for so long as a child.

…

I saw my best friend walk outside. He looked way better than I remembered – definitely having lost some weight. He also seemed a lot more confident in himself. His posture had improved. There was no longer a vacant expression etched into the pre-pubescent asymmetry of his face. It had been replaced by something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the substitute was.

I saw all this despite the obvious fact that he was rather vexed. I attributed it to the surprise I had given him – having been radio silent only a couple days ago. But even as he saw me, he did not seem to relax. Once again, I put this down to how his head must be spinning. Men are often found wanting in the part of their mind which is supposed to process emotion.

“Hey, big guy. Miss me?” I could not hide the air of confidence which was stemming from the brilliance of my surprise – and how it had evidently caught him so far off-guard.

“Aliza? H-How?”

“I realized I didn’t want you to be at peace any longer.” I also didn’t want you to continue cavorting with that bitch.

“Yes, I see that. But, why now? All of a sudden?”

“Dude, shut up. I wanted to come see you. It’s not a big deal.”

“After all this time?”

“Don’t be such a drama queen. It’s been like three days. I know I acted out a little bit, but come on, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of blaming it on my -”

“Zizi.” He looked genuinely confused.

Something was very wrong.

“When was the last time we...spoke?”

He was scaring me a little bit. In that moment, I thought of so many things I’m not proud of. For some reason, the first of those things was senility; then of whether or not I was talking to the guy I thought I was, or whether this was someone else entirely. That would explain the weight loss. Fuck no, his eyes. I’d recognize them anywhere.

I found myself waving our virtual conversation in his face. “Yo, Patient X? You done? I don’t remember you being the kind to continue a prank on this long.” I was freaking out a little, now.

“We haven’t -,” he sighed. “We haven’t spoken in like six years.”

“Enough. I want you to stop whatever the hell this is, okay? I don’t know where you’ve suddenly found this bit of sense of hu -”

“I’m not being funny. You know I never was. We haven’t spoken in a long, long time.” His face was turning visibly pale – there's no way he was kidding. I looked at him, and I’m sure I was pleading with my eyes for him to cease at once. And in his eyes, I saw only panic.

…

It’s remarkable how little his lounge had changed in all this time. Maybe I could offer it in a barter, to make everything else the same again?

Still the same spacious air to the room, although most of it was more of an illusion than an actual architectural fact. His mother was an interior designer, and she knew exactly where to have paint coated somberly, and where it could be used to add character. A mirror in one corner did a lot for it as well. The same beige sofas, and well-polished coffee tables.

The same book shelves, armed with more familiar titles now. Back in the day, I imagined that his dad was some sort of ultra-secret-super-scientist, who would need to read all these books prior to each one of his secret missions saving the world.

There were only two major differences – the small TV of yesteryears had been replaced by an elegant, slightly over-bearing replacement; it was on the wall, and played some sort of senseless news about some over-hyped actress being ‘harassed’ in public. And the second difference was speaking to me now.

“So, I guess we have something of a mystery to figure out now, huh?”

“What’s been going on? Are you losing your mind? Who the fuck have I been talking to all this time? And how have we been corresponding back and forth – until suddenly, one day, we weren’t?”

“Zizi,” he tried to sound calm, but was just adding to my annoyance. Even the way he said ‘Zizi’ was artificial – and rather unsettling. “We’ve e-mailed each other. We have. I remember all of that. For three years.”

“Oh, so that was you?”

“Yes. And then -”

“And then,” I interrupted, the last of my patience vanishing into the no-longer-calming-aura of the room. “You said we could switch to social media. And I gave you my account, because you’re an idiot who was probably the last to give in to the future. I was relieved! It meant I could finally delete that unprofessional e-mail ID I had.”

He was silent. But this time, it seemed different. He wasn’t crunching up his face in that way he usually did when he was figuring stuff out – the way his face had been a few moments ago. Instead, there was a sheepish look to it. It seemed like guilt.

Was he fabricating?

“I -” I could see him trying to rid himself of the terrible feeling. He was not going to manage it. I swore of that; even before I even knew what he had done. “I don’t have an answer for you, Aliza. ”

I hurled the glass of boring water that he had handed to me moments earlier, straight at his face. He ducked in time. I launched myself onto him in a flash, and used my nails to the effect that women sometimes do in moments of weakness. He did nothing. Just kept screaming, then saying, then whispering, then screaming again (when the second onslaught of scratching came). He was repeating that same word that people in his position have always chanted as an exercise in futility; ‘Sorry’.

…

I was running. I was sobbing. I was hopeless, helpless, despairing, desperate, stupefied, furious, terrified, miserable, shell-shocked. I was sad.

My mind had already decided not to help me with logic any longer – it had waned slowly, even as I was sitting in that neo-antique lounge; but now, it had departed altogether. The only voice now was that of emotion. Raw emotion, mixed with a sort of rage. I think they call it wet anger, which makes it sound about as unproductive as it really is.

The hamster on the wheel was taking a break – and wondering if there really was any point in going on.

For some reason, the memory that kept circulating was one from back when I had just moved here. Maybe a fortnight in, I met him for the first time – and it was about as awkward a meeting as you could expect between two kids. His ‘social anxiety’ (I don’t want to throw that phrase around without evidence, that does no good) was pretty obvious, but my stupid sensibilities were immediately charmed.

“Ahad,” he had mumbled, shyly extending his right hand – as he looked at, then away from, then at, then away from me.

“Hey Ahad, I’m Aliza,” I said with the confidence of someone who was undoubtedly going to be disappointed in herself many times later on in her life.

“You, uh, want to see my truck collection?”

“Sure! Let’s go.”

“Oh, n-now?”

“Yes. I’m bored. This city is already boring.”

“It gets better,” he said, looking down at his feet – as if his feet had the secret to my entertainment. Despite his demeanour, I could not help but look forward to absolutely nothing - I’m not sure if that was a compliment for him, or an insult for me.

I will admit that his truck collection did not interest me an awful lot. However, he very much did. Again, I do not really understand the nitty gritty of what it was exactly – indeed, most people would have said that he had quite little to offer in terms of being attractive. Perhaps that was it? Perhaps, even at that young age, the false confidence of people operating out of an entanglement of inferiority complexes was not something I was particularly drawn to.

“And this one,” he was saying. “I got this one from Dubai. I don’t really remember why we went there, but it was fun. I ate so much that day, and then I fell asleep – and when I woke up, dad had got me this.”

He enjoyed the little things in life. He was not too caught up –

A message. I knew it was Ahad, even before I had glanced down at my phone.

Can you come back, Aliza? (Why was he using my name like that? What happened to ‘Zizi’? He was the only one who called me that, and I quite enjoyed it.)

Thus began a brief tug-of-war in my mind. It did not last too long.

Why?

Just please. I know you don’t owe me anything. But do it. For him.

What, on earth, was this man on about now? Did he have a freshly invented tale that he was more satisfied with?

Fine. But only because my parents are taking their sweet time in coming to fetch me.

…

I hadn’t managed to run too far. I also hadn’t paid much attention to where I was going, so it took a few inconvenient minutes for me to get back. Subconsciously, I had redirected myself to pass in front of my old home. Simpler times.

A second memory came up, and once again, it had absolutely no business being here. We were running around, not doing much. Ahad was comfortable enough with me now to show me how he wasn’t the most athletic – it did not surprise me an awful lot.

As we ran through that chilly Karachi night, he stopped – once again short of breath. I slowed down, as I was rather accustomed to doing. We weren’t meandering as kids – we were running more to stay in shape. It wasn’t working very well for either one of us – to be honest; but maybe he made me feel better about myself. He usually did that.

“When are you going to get tested for asthma, dude?”

“I did,” he said, then paused to make sure he had enough breath to continue. “I don’t have it.”

“You don’t? What is it, then?”

“They want to run some more tests. I’m not sure.”

And from this random flashback, I went on to one of a dream – I was running around, much like that day. But in the dream, I was alone. And when I reached his house, I rung the doorbell. He came out, but he did not say anything. I pointed to my watch, feeling mildly annoyed (strange how you can feel annoyed in some dreams, but not do the simple deed of actually talking.)

Ahad looked at me, and shook his head. He looked sad. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was because I was unable to find the words – or it could be because the dream was so incredibly dumb, and I lacked the ability to speak. Whichever one it was, I knew I was dreaming in that moment. And I woke up, feeling a bit anxious.

I messaged him immediately – and told him about the dream. He took a while to reply, and blandly said he could not offer an interpretation for it. Thanks a bunch, Freud.

…

We were standing outside his house. He seemed like he was having an extreme crisis – and I just looked on, doing my best to appear both indifferent to his feelings, and keen to know the truth. There was a breeze coming in from the sea – the kind that usually does nothing to dissipate the humidity.

“No more lies, Aliza,” he said, at long last.

“It’s taken you this long to come up with that? ‘No more lies’? Why was your first impulse just to flat-out try to deceive me? I’ve waited all this time, trying to keep up some sort of – something, between us. You know how kids these days deal with long distance? Not well.” I was going onto an entire tirade, surprising myself every step of the way.

He nodded, and I could see that nice-guy sympathy in his eyes. I should have stopped being so harsh, but obviously, there wasn’t a lot of rationality going into my approach right now – nor indeed was there much empathy.

The breeze blew a little stronger, and it lifted some hair near his left temple area. As that happened, I couldn’t help but notice (quite shocked to still be observant – all matters at hand considered) that there was an old scar over the area that had momentarily been exposed. I had a vivid image of Ahad and his brother fighting once – probably the only time I saw it.

His brother – whose name I was still struggling to recall – was something of a rebellious child. It was probably just a phase. He was two years younger, slightly more extroverted, and definitely more open about himself. The two brothers got along quite well, but there was a problem I could not now remember one day shortly after I had moved there. When I got to their house to nag Ahad as per usual, I could hear loud noises coming from inside. I rushed in uninvited, and saw the two brothers throwing their kiddy fists at each other.

As I hurried forward and tried to break up the rather pathetic excuse for a scuffle, the younger brother fell forward – rather weirdly, because I think he tried to get in one last punch and actually threw too much of his weight behind it, too quickly.

He fell and hit his head on the edge of one of the wooden coffee tables. There was quite a bit of blood, but we (me more than the other two) managed to stop the bleeding, until his parents came over. I was scared in the moment – as would be expected; but as the car pulled away to go to an ER, I was slightly proud of myself too. I had kept my calm through a time when Ahad – not helped by the anger-panic concoction – was definitely losing it.

What was the younger brother’s name? Why did I not remember?

I looked hard into the eyes of the guy standing before me, and I knew the mystery no longer needed to be explained (convenient, because he wasn’t launching into any explanations, by the looks of things).

I swallowed, and did my utmost to manage a somewhat reassuring smile. Tears welled up in my eyes, as they did in his.

“Do you remember my name, Aliza?” And that was that – there was nothing more to be said about all the things that had happened.

Of course, I still didn’t remember his name. But as tears decided they were done being confined to only my eyes – I tried to approach the topic whose conclusion I pretty much knew. Closure is a bitchy idea, but it does need to be had.

“What happened to Ahad?”

“We took him to the hospital because he kept getting infections. Pretty much the moment the doctor examined him, I remember my parents being rather worried. They had seen something on the doctor’s face that I did not recognize. They did some tests, and he had blood cancer.”

A crow somewhere decided to launch into some cawing – to add an even more Poe-esque air to this little re-funeral.

“It was too late,” he went on. “The cancer had found its way into multiple organs. Nothing much could be done. We kept him comfortable. We tried - “

“Why the fuck didn’t he tell me?” I had burst out again.

He flushed.

“It was my idea. I told him not to ruin the last few moments he would have talking to you. I uh -” he looked at me, then away – it reminded me so much of Ahad that I was physically in pain now. “I promised him I’d tell you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I didn’t. It just never seemed l-like I could. Once he was...once he had gone, I decided it would better for us to start talking somewhere else. Email may not have been inconvenient, but it was also something I wanted just the two of you to have.”

I snorted sarcastically.

“We would always be talking about something so bright and ch-cheery -”

“Because I thought I was talking to Ahad!”

“I know that, Aliza. I know I could never be him – but I envied you two so much. And I wasn’t stealing you from him; he was gone. He would want -”

“Stop.” I took a few steps back. “Let me explain something to you.” Every tiny part of me was sure that I had made my point – that the kid did not need to be told off any longer. That we should just have this moment as an ode to Ahad – make it a bit more eulogy-like. But that is not how anger works. “I thought I was talking to my best friend, not his younger brother. You chose to just assume that things between me and him were going to stay the same – even if he no longer stayed? Do you realize how preposterous that sounds? You sound completely psychotic! You are my childhood friend’s brother! My friend whom I had all the intention of marrying one day. Whose children I wanted to have. Who sounded so wonderful every time I talked to him. He was the man of my dreams ever since I was seven! And every time I talked to him, all the time that I talked to him – I would never, ever imagine myself with anyone else! For all the years -”

“For all the years,” he interrupted. “Even after the emails were done?”

More cawing – as if mocking how this guy had suddenly turned the tables of the argument rather well. I looked around in annoyance (and in some futile attempt at deflection).

Louder cawing.

Where did this little idiot get off? The audacity! How could he possibly think he was ever going to be Ahad? Just because he was family? And how the fuck did lying to me figure into his grand plan? He was always going to be Basim, not -

Basim. That was his name.

…