When I think of my childhood, I remember it as a happy one. I lived in Model Town, Lahore, in a huge old house with big lawns filled with flowers and fruit trees. I was a cheerful little girl who laughed easily, trusted everyone, and loved to play outdoors. Our house had fruit trees of all kinds: Mango, three varieties of guava, orange, lemon, pomegranate, mulberry, plum, loquat, tamarind, grapes, and jaman, among others. The jaman tree was my favorite. I still remember climbing up as a child on to the garage roof where the huge tree sprawled, picking the fresh purple-colored fruit and eating it on the spot. I can still feel the cool, monsoon-washed leaves against my face and neck as I romped amongst the branches. We also had a vegetable garden, maintained lovingly by my mother. We had flowering plants and shrubs of all kinds: rose, motiya, gardenia, hibiscus, daisy, bougainvillea, dahlia, chrysanthemum, marigold, pansy, sweet pea, to name a few.
My childhood was a happy one, but as I grew older, the world I used to roam so freely started to shrink. My grandfather returned from abroad, as did my uncle and his family, and adjustments had to be made to the family house. Our front lawn and backyard were divided into half, my mother’s garden uprooted to build an annex for my uncle and his family. My grandfather had the jaman tree chopped down and an ugly office building constructed for himself in its place. I still remember pacing the driveway the night after the tree was gone, sobbing bitterly at the loss.
Other changes were taking place as I grew older. My family was conservative, but my father—an erstwhile film star—was overly so. My grandfather had never approved of his profession, and my father had always looked down on it himself as a consequence. He must have been terrified of the possibility of his daughter going into show business like him, so he squelched every hint of independence in me. I was never allowed to participate in school or college plays or any other extra-curricular activities. Getting permission for going to friends’ birthday parties was an anxiety-ridden ordeal. My father seemed to resent my growing older, as if it was a crime I was perpetually committing, making him irritable and despotic towards me. While my friends were cosseted and spoiled by their fathers, I frequently found myself crying hot tears of indignation at his harsh treatment of me.
My father also had a passion for mutilating trees. He thought of it as pruning, but it really was a haphazard kind of violence, to me anyway. He liked being a handyman around the house, and frequently went around cutting low-hanging branches so that the tree would “grow up straight,” as he put it. I always felt like it was not the trees but a part of myself that was being maimed. I never dared voice my disapproval to my father. I was afraid of his anger. But my silent inward protest slowly evolved into a towering rage. I used to watch out for the new buds and leaves in the trees and bushes around our house. One day I woke up to see my favorite pink rose bush mangled just when dozens of new buds were about to bloom. Now the fresh green branches with the unopened buds lay in a heap on the ground, while the rose bush itself looked naked, with brown inner branches sticking out like thorns from its middle. I could not believe my eyes. In sheer rage I picked up a small axe my father kept among his tools and screamed: “Why not cut it all out?” hacking at the bush in fury. Luckily my father was out of the house at the time. My mother watched me in amazement, silent as always. That was the first time I realized how closely I identified my own self with trees and how much I hated my father for distorting both.
***
I ended up having to pay in my own person for my father’s low self-esteem. The marriage he arranged for me was a transition from a frustrated existence to a claustrophobic one. It was a bad replay of the conditions in my father’s house; only now it was a family of three: father, mother and son, sawing off my branches, mutilating me, trying to get at my roots. Most families in Pakistan make up for their numerous frustrations by having a living, breathing, young woman under their absolute control. It gives them a sadistic pleasure to humiliate her and to make her do their bidding. Indeed, the story is so common that it is tedious to repeat it. It took three and a half years of bending over backwards for my spine to finally snap back to an upright position.
***
The first step in getting out of a nightmare is to open one’s eyes. Perhaps self-awareness comes only when we have been thoroughly shaken out of our complacencies and our fond beliefs. Just as a tree must shed all its leaves and stand naked and cold through winter before spring will give it new life, so must we be shorn of all our dead ideas before we can embrace newness. But there is no one point in our lives when we do this. It starts at some point, but then the process goes on throughout our lives. There are reversals, however, if only in memory. One may well wonder if mourning ever stops, if we ever stop being angry. Maybe not. But perhaps healing means replacing anger with compassion. One can try. All stories of wisdom tell us that we must first have compassion for ourselves.
***
It was the summer of 2002. For the previous two years I had battled the consequences of my decision to breathe freely: the indifference of my family; the wrath of the family I had just shaken off; the struggle to be financially independent; the agonizing visits to the courthouse for my son’s custody. It was the summer of 2002 and I was heartily sick of it all. That was when I went to Bozeman, Montana with my son.
How can I describe the change from Lahore to Bozeman? It seemed incredible that it had taken only two days for us to step into a totally new dimension--a new life in every way. What a relief it was, to be able to undo the work of years in just forty-eight hours! I felt reborn on the other side of the world into the paradise I had lost as a child—indeed a world that had affinities with the primeval forest we’re all said to harbor in our collective memories.
My earliest memory of Bozeman is of tall pine trees against a pink and red sunset outside the Gallatin Valley airport. It was August, and the weather was mild and balmy. Bozeman is a small university town, covering an area less than 20 square miles at the base of the Bridger Mountains in southwest Montana. It was very refreshing to exchange the dust and the sweltering August heat of Lahore for the clean, cool, pine-fragrant air of the Rocky Mountains. I felt invigorated. Bozeman is a forest in itself; over 26,000 trees grace the boulevards, parks and other areas: green ash, linden, honeylocust, maple, oak, chokecherry, crabapple, elm, paper birch. I did not know the trees’ names at the time, and I did not try to find out. One reminisces about something only when it has become a cherished memory—like that of a lost love. One recalls incidents; one finds pleasure in dwelling on the little details; one talks about related things—anything to recover, at least in memory, that which we have lost and which gave us pleasure.
I fell in love with the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, and I forgot to be angry. My soul drew in the majestic trees, the vast, never-ending sky, the flower bushes, the sweet air, the hills carpeted with emerald grass and dotted with dandelions. It was sheer pleasure to look out the window, or walk to campus, or go anywhere at all.
It has been a long time since I left Bozeman, but I wonder why the magic still persists; why I have nothing but fond memories of my time in Bozeman, even though I was very poor, frequently sick, and always stressed. The answer, I think, lies not only in the fact that I “found myself,” or part of myself, when I was on my own for the first time in my life; it also lies in the fact that beauty—great beauty—has the power to move us as nothing else can.
This beauty is not something objective that one finds ready-made in a place or a person; beauty is created when we respond to our surroundings spontaneously and instinctively. Bozeman gave me the knowledge that I would never be as degraded or despondent as I had been in the past. The beauty and kindness of Bozeman and its people will stay with me always.
When I left Bozeman, the trace I left behind was a pink mini-rose bush that I had planted outside my front door. It had been given to me by my dear friend Karen, who tells me that the little plant has now grown into a luxuriant bush, spreading in wild profusion against the wall.
I have asked her to get a picture for me.
My childhood was a happy one, but as I grew older, the world I used to roam so freely started to shrink. My grandfather returned from abroad, as did my uncle and his family, and adjustments had to be made to the family house. Our front lawn and backyard were divided into half, my mother’s garden uprooted to build an annex for my uncle and his family. My grandfather had the jaman tree chopped down and an ugly office building constructed for himself in its place. I still remember pacing the driveway the night after the tree was gone, sobbing bitterly at the loss.
Other changes were taking place as I grew older. My family was conservative, but my father—an erstwhile film star—was overly so. My grandfather had never approved of his profession, and my father had always looked down on it himself as a consequence. He must have been terrified of the possibility of his daughter going into show business like him, so he squelched every hint of independence in me. I was never allowed to participate in school or college plays or any other extra-curricular activities. Getting permission for going to friends’ birthday parties was an anxiety-ridden ordeal. My father seemed to resent my growing older, as if it was a crime I was perpetually committing, making him irritable and despotic towards me. While my friends were cosseted and spoiled by their fathers, I frequently found myself crying hot tears of indignation at his harsh treatment of me.
My father also had a passion for mutilating trees. He thought of it as pruning, but it really was a haphazard kind of violence, to me anyway. He liked being a handyman around the house, and frequently went around cutting low-hanging branches so that the tree would “grow up straight,” as he put it. I always felt like it was not the trees but a part of myself that was being maimed. I never dared voice my disapproval to my father. I was afraid of his anger. But my silent inward protest slowly evolved into a towering rage. I used to watch out for the new buds and leaves in the trees and bushes around our house. One day I woke up to see my favorite pink rose bush mangled just when dozens of new buds were about to bloom. Now the fresh green branches with the unopened buds lay in a heap on the ground, while the rose bush itself looked naked, with brown inner branches sticking out like thorns from its middle. I could not believe my eyes. In sheer rage I picked up a small axe my father kept among his tools and screamed: “Why not cut it all out?” hacking at the bush in fury. Luckily my father was out of the house at the time. My mother watched me in amazement, silent as always. That was the first time I realized how closely I identified my own self with trees and how much I hated my father for distorting both.
***
I ended up having to pay in my own person for my father’s low self-esteem. The marriage he arranged for me was a transition from a frustrated existence to a claustrophobic one. It was a bad replay of the conditions in my father’s house; only now it was a family of three: father, mother and son, sawing off my branches, mutilating me, trying to get at my roots. Most families in Pakistan make up for their numerous frustrations by having a living, breathing, young woman under their absolute control. It gives them a sadistic pleasure to humiliate her and to make her do their bidding. Indeed, the story is so common that it is tedious to repeat it. It took three and a half years of bending over backwards for my spine to finally snap back to an upright position.
***
The first step in getting out of a nightmare is to open one’s eyes. Perhaps self-awareness comes only when we have been thoroughly shaken out of our complacencies and our fond beliefs. Just as a tree must shed all its leaves and stand naked and cold through winter before spring will give it new life, so must we be shorn of all our dead ideas before we can embrace newness. But there is no one point in our lives when we do this. It starts at some point, but then the process goes on throughout our lives. There are reversals, however, if only in memory. One may well wonder if mourning ever stops, if we ever stop being angry. Maybe not. But perhaps healing means replacing anger with compassion. One can try. All stories of wisdom tell us that we must first have compassion for ourselves.
***
It was the summer of 2002. For the previous two years I had battled the consequences of my decision to breathe freely: the indifference of my family; the wrath of the family I had just shaken off; the struggle to be financially independent; the agonizing visits to the courthouse for my son’s custody. It was the summer of 2002 and I was heartily sick of it all. That was when I went to Bozeman, Montana with my son.
How can I describe the change from Lahore to Bozeman? It seemed incredible that it had taken only two days for us to step into a totally new dimension--a new life in every way. What a relief it was, to be able to undo the work of years in just forty-eight hours! I felt reborn on the other side of the world into the paradise I had lost as a child—indeed a world that had affinities with the primeval forest we’re all said to harbor in our collective memories.
My earliest memory of Bozeman is of tall pine trees against a pink and red sunset outside the Gallatin Valley airport. It was August, and the weather was mild and balmy. Bozeman is a small university town, covering an area less than 20 square miles at the base of the Bridger Mountains in southwest Montana. It was very refreshing to exchange the dust and the sweltering August heat of Lahore for the clean, cool, pine-fragrant air of the Rocky Mountains. I felt invigorated. Bozeman is a forest in itself; over 26,000 trees grace the boulevards, parks and other areas: green ash, linden, honeylocust, maple, oak, chokecherry, crabapple, elm, paper birch. I did not know the trees’ names at the time, and I did not try to find out. One reminisces about something only when it has become a cherished memory—like that of a lost love. One recalls incidents; one finds pleasure in dwelling on the little details; one talks about related things—anything to recover, at least in memory, that which we have lost and which gave us pleasure.
I fell in love with the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, and I forgot to be angry. My soul drew in the majestic trees, the vast, never-ending sky, the flower bushes, the sweet air, the hills carpeted with emerald grass and dotted with dandelions. It was sheer pleasure to look out the window, or walk to campus, or go anywhere at all.
It has been a long time since I left Bozeman, but I wonder why the magic still persists; why I have nothing but fond memories of my time in Bozeman, even though I was very poor, frequently sick, and always stressed. The answer, I think, lies not only in the fact that I “found myself,” or part of myself, when I was on my own for the first time in my life; it also lies in the fact that beauty—great beauty—has the power to move us as nothing else can.
This beauty is not something objective that one finds ready-made in a place or a person; beauty is created when we respond to our surroundings spontaneously and instinctively. Bozeman gave me the knowledge that I would never be as degraded or despondent as I had been in the past. The beauty and kindness of Bozeman and its people will stay with me always.
When I left Bozeman, the trace I left behind was a pink mini-rose bush that I had planted outside my front door. It had been given to me by my dear friend Karen, who tells me that the little plant has now grown into a luxuriant bush, spreading in wild profusion against the wall.
I have asked her to get a picture for me.