malalai khan

It’s the last day of the semester, and I’m staring down a black cat’s glare, the fur slick with rain. After a few more minutes of listening to the same song on repeat, I get up and pounce around the writhing worms that can’t seem to find their way on the pavement, one of which was squished right in the center. Probably underneath the anxious tread of students, teachers, attendants passing me by while the roof of the corridors sings a low pitter-patter.

The earphones barely do a good job of keeping my thoughts away—two months of being at home, alone with myself, the mounting need to be productive and relax at the same time, to improve and improve and improve everything and anything I can do, knowing very well I wouldn’t in the end. I can already see the scrapped planners and incomplete lists.

I take one more walk by the riverside, umbrella in hand, while the index finger gets sliced from the iron, and I head for the parking lot. I look out of the car window. The old bridge has sunk lower now.

Two days have already passed like a blur. Last night, around 12:30 a.m., there was a text in the class group regarding the results. The portal didn’t load. I waited. When the clock struck 1, I opened the phone again. The bright white light of the screen only showed what I was afraid of, but I knew it was going to end up like this. Hands shaking, I put the phone away, my breaths flitting like a hummingbird. I try to see something in the ceiling—maybe a clue that I am dreaming. Of course, I wasn’t.

I’m up early instead and tapping my foot away to the morning song of the birds. The black screen of the television reflects a monotone figure sitting on the couch, hunched forward. It’s ridiculous how the only brief moment of feeling content with myself is entirely dependent on a few digital numbers, the weight of which breaks the scales itself. Even though I don’t believe in the horoscope, I find it quite ironic that my zodiac sign is Libra.

Hours pass by looking at the clock and pacing in the hall until everyone is home, the summer heat of the afternoon closing in like an unsolicited visitor. I tell Mother, I tell Father, I tell it to myself even. Again. And again. Unworthy of some shiny crown invisible to all. They tell me it’s fine. It’s nothing. It barely counts. I repeat it over and over until my voice breaks.

August came through the door alongside disastrous floods across the nation. Headlines describe the death toll in big, bold letters. I open the window of the study room, letting in the smell of petrichor. The bookshelves have been gathering dust from all the neglect in the past five months. I’m so behind on my reading goal, but at least I wrote more this year. Till now, at least. At least. At least. Bare compensation.

I don’t remember much of July, save for making Angela* read The Tale of Despereaux on the pretext of a reward—my attempt at developing her love for literature, though she is a complete opposite of nine-year-old me. In all honesty, she is lovely as she is. Energetic, confident, frank. I asked her last month what animal I reminded her of, and she replied, after narrowing her eyes at me, “You’re just an octopus.” I was expecting a raven or a weasel even. I raised an eyebrow, “How?” “I don’t have to explain it to you,” and she went on making a craft, surrounded by paper.

And oh yes, how could I forget—on a devilishly hot July morning, I turned on the phone half-asleep to find a ton of messages tagging and congratulating me. Apparently, I was (am) a finalist for National Youth Poet Laureate. I went back to sleep, happy I wasn’t dreaming.

It’s still August, halfway almost. Pakistan Studies classes have been going on through Zoom. The tree branches of pomegranate, guava, and papaya brush against the curtainless window while the teacher’s voice praises a coursemate from another department over and over for asking fifth-grade-level questions about history. I wonder to myself how politically unaware some people can choose to be. Of course, this is my envy and pride speaking, my top two evils besides despair. I disgust myself with such pretentiousness and verbally call it out in front of the mirror, a familiar stranger in the glass.

As my mind wanders off, I force it back to the class and answer the teacher’s questions. Democracy. Independence. Liberty. Rights. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. What empty words. A hollow shell of a vocabulary.

A friend texts me, asking if I could go to the Literary Youth Festival this time again. I had signed up, in fact, but I don’t feel like meeting a lot of people now. I enjoyed last year’s, though. I think I am burnt out.

A few days later, I give the midterm of Pakistan Studies. It’s a terribly humid day, and I can feel my eye bags appearing for the first time. I want to pry open my bones and wash them in cold water.

The result comes almost immediately—I got the highest. I don’t know who I’m trying to impress anywhere. To waste the idle days away, I finally get to cleaning the study while listening to the horror audio drama Borrasca. A surprise to some, an expectation from others, I find comfort in horror and true crime, even though it will make me look behind my shoulder every time I am walking alone at university in the late hours. I’ve always had trust issues anyway.

I’ve been plagued by surreal dreams so often now, from factories of paints to the balcony of our old house, the half moon lighting the faces of two children who morph into disfigured bodies that grab me, killing me right before I wake up.

In trying to make sense of myself, I watch philosophical debates and read essays on life, death, and God. I finish watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which is one of the precursors. There is this quote which has stuck with me, “Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return.” This equivalent exchange remains at the heart of the universe itself, from stardust to flesh.

And so, August ends with the orientation of the National Youth Poet Laureate program. I don’t stand a chance against all the talent, but Angela* has just said to me, “Doubting is bad.”

September is supposed to mark the transition into fall, but it feels hotter than ever before. I scroll through articles and video essays on politics and society while occasionally head-butting into the Pakistan Studies lectures to drop a relevant fact. Even though I don’t like it, it is hard to stay out of politics when your entire existence is political.

Late at night, I play Worms: Battle Royale with my siblings on the computer, the monitor shining on our grinning faces huddled together like a litter of puppies. It would be a pathetic and evil lie to say I do not love them. I sneak my phone, pointing it towards them, and smile.

We visit some relatives on Thursday, or Friday—I don’t recall. Everyone is so happy and talking about marriage, babies, house, back issues. A girl of my age sits next to me. I give my best shot at keeping the conversation up. “What’s your name?” “Where do you study?” “What do you do?” “What do you want to do in life?” Grasping at straws, I fail. She is up and gone with her friends as the door curtain billows.

I go through my phone gallery to save photos on the computer. I show one to my older sister, Penelope*, and remark that I look exactly like it from a year before. She adds, “You’re never changing. You’re the same.” When I enter the girls’ lounge at university to prepare for the final exam, a classmate sitting cross-legged on the carpet points at me, “She is never going to change.”

I play a video game, Red Dead Redemption 2, when the seat at the computer is free, which is rare. There’s a scene where the protagonist, an outlaw, sits with a nun and tells her that he is afraid. Afraid of what is to follow. Afraid of nothing working out. Afraid of not having made a choice for himself. I sketch a deer held in arms and draw a crossfire over it.

The result arrives about three days before the semester starts. Despite it being good, I don’t feel content. I take a poetry workshop and write something of a poem on Buddha and a spider. I wither the last bits of summer vacation away on the garden swing and in the study, toying with a dead June beetle, its exoskeleton bright green. I put it back in the toothpick jar and think of getting a frame for the moths, my attempt at feeling in power over something. How strange it is to be human. The equivalent of an ant.