Haze

We cheated the night and received our sunrise only hours after dinnertime on board the plane. We arrived in a haze. Now we look across a cricket pitch and cannot see the spectators on the other side. Everything is feint, the light dusky even at midday. In the afternoon, long shafts of light pour through high arches and illuminate dust curling gracefully through the otherwise deeply shaded verandah. Last night I dreamt I was at a barbecue trying get out of the smoke to breathe fresh air. I awoke and still dreamt of fresh air.

But perhaps even if the air were clear I would still be in a haze. I can hardly think straight. We get tired at funny times. Our daughter fell asleep in the mobile phone office in the time it took them to tell us they can’t give foreigners SIM cards. Our son conked out in a rickshaw, his head bobbing around as we bumped along. When the muezzins call everyone to prayers at sunset, their voices curling through the air just as gracefully as that dust, I just hear a call to bed.

The children cannot walk in a straight line because of all the grown-ups crowding in on them. We’re at a chrysanthemum show and faces loom over them telling them they are so cute, even as the children grow angry or bored by it. Hands reach out to pinch their cheeks, pick them up or pat their fair hair. Then there are phones in their faces trying to take photos. Most have failed as our girl has wriggled away and I pretend to be an ineffectual mother and shrug and say, ‘What can I do?’ Privately I am proud of her sense of self. The best photos anyone will have taken will be by some students on the campus where we’re temporarily staying. The children are holding hands and looking at some cats slinking around the snack bar, saying ‘so cute.’ They try to pick them up but the cats won’t have it. They also have their dignity.

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The streets are lined with anti-corruption campaign posters. Today is anti-corruption day. There are serious messages emblazoned over all of them: red slashes through wads of five thousand rupee notes; handcuffs; criminals with stacks of gold coins. Charmingly, these adverts are sponsored by Vital Tea, who display a cup of their brew beneath each image, the steam seeming to soften the problem somewhat, to suggest that the nation is entrenched in no problem so great that it cannot be resolved over a good cup of tea. Indeed, given the deliciousness of some of the chai I have drunk this week*, I could almost believe it is so.

*I particularly recommend the tandoori chai (oven baked tea, a new one on me) at Karachi Red Rock Grill, a place one would not imagine would serve such good tea.