Christmas Day

The taxi driver didn’t know what all the fuss was about, why we’d been pulled over, why we couldn’t drive beyond the barriers and why four policemen were pointing guns at the car. (Four others, I should add, were drinking little cups of tea.)

“It’s their Eid, their festival,” one police officer told him, gesturing with his chin into the part of the city they were guarding, a Christian neighbourhood. This answer seemed to satisfy him; it made sense to him that armed police would be stood outside ‘their Eid.’ Maybe he understood about that two thousand-year-old hostility to Christmas when once, ‘a voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation.’

And so, the butchers were able to wield their cleavers in peace and prepare the meat that the Christians would come out and buy after their morning services. No bells and no Christmas jingles, but rather the sound of chopping, filled the streets as we and other families dressed in glittery new clothes, walked to church.

There, we sang psalms, heard about the shepherds and prayed prayers under balloons, a cross and a Father Christmas. Then there was cake and gulab jamuns and two more cakes. The pastor’s mother had been up since six spicing and simmering a mutton curry until now, when it was thick and rich and soft and everything a Christmas food should be, served with puris, as if the dish lacked oil. Turkey was far from my mind.

The days of King Herod once again seemed near when, outside, we turned a corner and there, looming above us, was a camel and then behind him, another, nearly filling the narrow lane. The riders astride them were neither wise, though, nor men. Little boys were larking around on them, trying to stand up, trying to touch the walls either side, trying, in a word, to fly. They had spent their Christmas money on this ride and were going to get as high as possible. Further on, a man pushed along a portable ferris wheel, hoping for more children with coins wanting to ride high. We passed a fairground and glimpsed children collapsed laughing on trampolines or horrified at how high the boat swing swung.

Elsewhere, children swarmed around a travelling toy seller, the wings of his big box wide open to display all his shining plastic wares. Who needs to shop in the run-up to Christmas when such a useful chap comes by on the day and the kids seem happy enough to buy the stuff themselves? Indeed did anyone do any Christmas shopping in advance? Did we all forget to click and collect at the customer service desk to pick up our festive favourites, our show-stoppers? It seemed so, for every grocer and every butcher was doing a roaring trade and people were streaming out of Gourmet with cake boxes in plastic bags.

Then we turned the corner and were back where ‘their Eid’ was not, and caught the bus home on a dusty Wednesday afternoon. Here, the landlord had got the painters in. So after the children had opened their presents, we dialled for a take-away, ordering Chicken Sajji, knowing that this was more like a roast chicken than most Lahori chicken preparations are. I squeezed under a ladder and amidst the clatter of paint tins and work men’s banter, peeled and roasted some potatoes, carrots and mystery vegetable. We all enjoyed our meal a lot, eaten in our bedroom, away from the fumes.

When I went back out into the kitchen later that evening, when the children were all tucked up in bed, I noticed a light spray of white paint settled on each item on the kitchen surface, so very like a fine dusting of powdered snow.