I am writing this on a cold night in Amman, having just told off a cat for running into our house uninvited. I love cats – I have one of my own back home – but I believe cats to be polite, cute animals who should understand that running in and out of houses is not the nicest thing. It could potentially give human beings enjoying the quiet of the night a heart attack. Or just a bad fright.
Have finished 2 pages of what is possibly my twentieth attempt at writing the Great Pakistani Novel, and looked around the living room for other possible cats lurking anywhere. Coming from a city where we kept doors locked, build huge walls around our houses and pay everyone on the face of the planet to keep us safe, this intrusion has me highly rattled, now that my pulse has got back to normal.
I got thinking to two things a few days ago. A few days ago, I decided to eat lunch at an outside fast-food place, and as I sat there, I realized I could easily sit without having to keep one eye on my laptop bag and cell phone. Maybe it was because I was in a fancier district of town, but it still felt a bit unnerving. Has living with street crime made us completely incapable of living in the moment? Does pressing Ctrl+S make us incapable of writing – as Tori Amos says – with words flowing out like rain into a paper cup? A strange Karachiite reflection, considering I live in a city completely unlike Karachi (sigh) but strange nonetheless.
The second was blogging. I’ve maintained at least 7 blogs to date (4 of them were group blogs which I’ve left) that I can count at the top of my head. It made me wonder about how we narrate the stories of our lives to all and sundry. Everyone I speak to from home tells me how they feel like my life is glamorous. And while I agree that it is indeed quite a romantic notion to pack up for a year and live in a country where you cant speak the language and constantly feel lost in translation, there are so many non-glamorous elements (washing your kitchen floor in fit of boredom and exasperation, for one) that we never narrate. My friend Uncle Saf says that when people are having a miserable time they never post up pictures. I agree. Would I make long blog posts about a cat walking into my house back home? Probably not.
The strange quest to document every bit of our lives – why do we do it? For me, it is because I want to record every little element of my life for posterity. To be able to read back, even months later, on how I felt exactly at a given time in my life. While growing up I did this in a bunch of flowery/girlie diaries (still locked away with keys that I used to hide from everyone) my thoughts are now not my own. But as we become story tellers and not narrators, we fail to mention the smaller elements – the crushing exhaustion in our bones, the feeling of utter helplessness, the homesickness, and the daily discoveries that are both mundane and exciting. Are these stories really our own? Or are we just narrating our lives as we would like to see them reflected in everyone’s eyes? Or are the most interesting stories the ones we never tell?
When I was a writer, and I have to say it is with great sadness that I use it in past tense, I was obsessed with detailing the now. To make the unknown stories, known. That is why I spent hours transcribing interviews and spending time drinking tea with musicians and filmmakers, or sitting on the floor at a crowded concert, scribbling away. I was passionate and I had hope and I truly believed in something. The power of words. It makes me very proud when I think of my sister as a reporter – it really does, even though I havent seen her on televison yet.
And as I end another story, I wonder if someone, somwehere, is clicking Ctrl+S, saving their thoughts for posterity. And since I’m sure there is, that makes me smile for tonight. So does the fact that ive been listening to Strings, but there you have it.
