HOMEBODY GETS REJECTED

On a dark, rainy day in St. Albans (made unusually bleak because this was supposed to be a warm week in May but Arctic winds had sabotaged everyone’s hopes, dreams and expectations) I got a message from my mother. It said, very simply:

‘Visa rejected again. Ab bas.’

All the disappointment, hurt and pain in those five words made my heart bleed for my little mommy, whom I pictured with a dupatta on her head, going to Gerrys and returning exhausted and defeated because she had been refused the right to visit her daughter. Again. This was the second time in seven months she'd applied – and was insistent that she wasn’t going through this process again.

Moving to a new country is a displacement in every sense, but at times like these, it feels like exile. One can get used to the weather, a new routine, different habits and different structures. But one cannot get used to family ties severed by outside forces.

It hurts.

The conversations circulating around the refusal  are the usual ones. I’m usually interrogated with the intention of finding out what I did incorrectly so that the blame can fall on my incompetent shoulders.

Which category did you apply for? Did you provide a cover letter? Bank statements? Property deeds? Evidence of valid American Visa?

Then follows empathetic outrage. You did ALL this? Then why? Fazool. Bloody visa officers – low I.Q, high arrogance. Bloody pigs.

After this conspiracy theories take over.  

1. There’s a quota for this stuff which gets filled up very fast and then they merrily reject everyone applying afterwards.
2. They aren’t giving ANYONE a visa these days
3. It’s the Indians in Abu Dhabi taking perverse pleasure in rejecting Pakistanis
4. You have to know someone on the inside. I know someone on the inside. Next time, tell me and I’ll talk to them.

And then you go through the corresponding arguments in your head.

1. If there’s a quota, then how come other people are getting a visit visa for the summer still?
2. But I know two people who DID get their visa just last week!
3. If it’s the Indians and all Indians are evil, then why do any Pakistanis get visas at all?
4. If you knew someone on the inside, why THE FUCK didn’t you tell me earlier so I didn’t have to go through THIS and put my mum through it also? (The sentiment is followed by guilt at my readiness to by-pass the system - and the knowledge that despite everything, I'm ready to go flout it anyway - because the situation is such that one is made to feel like a criminal for wanting to meet one's loved ones.)

The ‘this’ that I describe is not just disappointment. It is anger because the reasons for refusal don’t make sense. ‘You don’t have enough money to go back,’ they say in the first instance, and in the second they refer to the same sum and ask ‘How can you justify that you have so much money?’ In any case, what reason is there to justify a woman’s income if her children are offering to sponsor her in the first place?

It is a sense of helplessness because all routes of appeal have been revoked, which makes visa refusal easy and one can see visa officers doing so with greater impunity.

It is a sense of injustice because the people who DO get the visa have, in the past, brought people, usually maids, over for six months and kept them on for twenty years. Because they have granted visas to religious clerics who have proceeded to go to Luton and incite revolt against the government. Because the rich and famous who smuggle and steal are allowed easy and free movement and aren’t really required to justify their income.  Because even in my angriest moment, I realize that such checks and balances are necessary precisely because we as a nation have bent so many rules and screwed the system over so many times that British paranoia over our entry can’t be seen as unjustified.

It’s a feeling of being guilty until proven innocent (followed by the wry realization that the guilty end up getting visas anyway) – and no trial is on offer. ‘What reason do you have to leave the country?’ they ask in a letter that is preluded with a 'Do Not Reply'.

To this my mum would answer – ‘I will be buried next to my husband here in Karachi – and besides – I have no desire to do the dishes for the rest of my life.’ But they don’t offer you the opportunity for an interview.

It’s a feeling of being dirty and guilty. A random stranger gets to interpret all the facts you’ve carefully provided, cull out the ones relevant to them and ignore all the rest, and question you as to how legitimate you are. And they type, in no uncertain terms, ‘We don’t believe you when you say you’ll go back.’ And with that neatly typed slap in the face, there’s a red stamp of refusal and a neat email telling you that your visa has been processed.

After a helpless ‘What can you do,’ and journey to resignation, the Rejects start dealing with life again. My mother has a better come back – ‘There’s some maslehat in this – it’s for the best.’ Perhaps there is. But she smarts and winces as she reassures me and I put on a brave face for her benefit. And so we go, waiting for time to pass until the month when I can visit her crawls slowly towards me.

In the meantime, there is just separation.

HOMEBODY AND HER ORCHIDS

In the last scene of the movie ’28 days’, a kooky ex-addict, Gerhardt, cries over a dead plant, insisting that he did everything to keep it alive: talking to it, stroking it, naming it and all that jazz. When the florist asks whether he watered it, Gerhardt pauses, looks down at his lifeless friend, and breaks down all over again, feeling ashamed at his own ineptitude. He has failed the ‘plant test’ of rehabilitation - that indicates that if you’re able to take care of yourself and a plant, then you’re capable of entering new relationships and adjusting in an uncertain world without the crutches you’ve been previously used to.

So when I moved to St. Albans, I bought an orchid inspired, in part, by Stephen King’s excellent definition of homesickness, which he calls it the ‘ache of the uprooted plant.’ I didn’t struggle with addiction or relationships, but I was displaced and uprooted, put in a climate that made me cold inside and out; transplanted among people who weren’t my friends or family. For a long time I felt a certain disability of spirit - an existential cowardice where I would wake up in bed, wide eyed and trembling, wondering where the familiar sounds of my life had gone. There was no whining of the low-voltage ceiling fan or the khat-khat of nearby construction. I even found myself longing for the caw of the crows and the chirp of the mynahs and the mournful sounds of the Azaan which, though depressing, at least provided my day with structured intervals. 

Everything was a hurdle: interaction with in-laws whom I hadn’t figured out yet; using the dishwasher and washing machine for the first time in my life; buying a ticket for the train or topping up my oyster. What I hadn’t expected about homesickness or orchid care was the constant feeling of stupidity that underpinned everything I did.

So when I went to Morrisons to do some groceries and saw an  sad looking orchid plant for sale for £5, I decided to adopt it. I was to discover later that orchids are the moodiest of plants. They prefer a rainforest’s humidity, grow under the shelter of thick trees, reaching towards dappled sunglight and like only an occasional soaking. And yet they thrive in nearly every house in the UK. Go figure.

I killed my first orchid by  overwatering it, constantly  changing its position in the house and spraying it with feed every time I looked at it. In short, I coddled it to death. I was exercising too much control, on it and also on myself. I was trying to fit in my new environment as soon as possible: forcing myself into relationships that were never going to work, with people who were too different or simply uninterested. I took two driving tests, gripping the wheel, clenching my teeth, not breathing - and failed both of them. So when the florist proclaimed that my orchid was dead, I was, like poor Gerhardt, devastated.

Yet life is a strange thing. It will prevail just when you stop coercing it to do so.

I bought a second plant and this time, read and youtubed everything about orchid care. I discovered that they require room. Their roots need to be freed from the packaging and aired and sprayed but only occasionally. They need conversation and love and careful replanting. So I let my orchid be, freeing  its roots from the moss and bark and replanting it in a bigger pot that gave it more room. To my amazement, it perked up after a week. I was jubilant!

And then its flowers all fell off. 

However, the leaves were still waxy and green.

Battling panic, I went on to google and read that this was the dormant period where the orchid stores up energy to re-bloom. I placed my poor plant pet on my side table and encouraged it,  ignoring my husband’s comment that it was a  highly depressing sight, with a single stem reaching into empty space, colourless and gnarled.

Taking my cue from my poor plant, I also took a while to be still. I let go of many people whom I thought would welcome me with open arms but who refused to do so. And in doing so I opened myself towards new relationships - friends who opened up a new world of camaraderie and culture and knowledge. I let go of trying to do everything perfectly - and passed my driving test. Quite by accident, I ended up setting up local meet up groups in the area and also stumbled into a book club of lovely ladies who liked to talk about life and the meaning of it. I gave my brain time to cool down and creativity crept in and I’ve started writing again.

I no longer wake up with dread and panic.

And just yesterday, I am happy to report that Le Orchid  has flowered. 

Little alien pods had clustered at the end of its stem all of last week, bunching and puckering up. I waited for one month with baited breath - trying not to get too excited because you know - if an orchid becomes unhappy, these buds implode from within and refuse to open up. But yesterday, beautiful teak and orange flowers with pink faces greeted  me in the early dawn, vibrantly silhouetted against the glazed window and the early light of the grey dawn.

I screamed and startled my husband who jumped out of bed with remarkable agility - ready to battle whatever foe had wandered into our sleepy sanctuary. Needless to say he wasn’t as enthused when he found out the orchid was the cause of his scare, groaning and grumbling all the way to the bathroom about ugly plants and crazy wives.

I can’t stop admiring my orchid. I honestly can’t. It has shown so much grit and perseverance. It looks at me and seems to say - if you can take care of me, woman, you can do the same for yourself. I went today and purchased 3 or 4 more and have created a small forest of thick leaves and green-grey roots and vibrant flowers. There will be challenges and more obsessing, but there will also be great beauty at the end of all the effort. I’m hoping I can say the same for my new life here. 

HOMEBODY IS HIJACKED

Once I passed my driving test, I became heavily dependent on the Tom-Tom, GPS or SATNAVs as they are called here in the UK. Satellite navigation systems are a godsend for the directionally-challenged such as myself, but they only work if one lives in sunny areas of open fields and small trees. If it’s cloudy, or raining, or high buildings flank you on both sides, the Satnav gets confused.

So good luck driving down Central London or anywhere else in a country whose default weather is blustery, wet and windy.

I named my satellite navigation system Simone.

She sounds like a Simone: a high-coiffured, perky-breasted thirty-something woman-of-the-world wearing a red Gucci business dress patiently repeating driving instructions and talking down to you so that you end up feeling terribly incompetent and stupid. She is posh and sophisticated – calculating traffic-free routes and allowing you to customize your journey based on whether you want to drive through picturesque lanes, avoid motorways or have a preference for country roads. If I ask her to, she will hand over the reins to automatic driving and even get the car to parallel park while I sit with my hands folded in my lap. Her Received Pronunciation Accent lulls me into a false sense of confidence so that I usually don’t find out she’s messed up until I see a sign saying ‘500 miles to Scotland’ when really, I just need to go to Mill Hill twenty minutes away from home.

Yesterday – Simone made me go round the same roundabout thrice because she couldn’t figure out where we were. When I was finally merrily cruising along the M1 motorway as I was supposed to be doing, she suddenly asked me to TURN AROUND IF POSSIBLE. Now even I know that you don’t execute a U-Turn on a highway with cars going 70 miles per hour. My heart stopped beating and my head started pounding – I was hurtling along at great speed to an unknown destination, yet one which Simone had set me on in the first place.

She started beeping to further ease my apprehension. My knuckles went white and fingers went cold with every pinging alert. I was told to take the next exit, which I was assured was coming in 100 yards – except that I knew I had already passed it some time ago. I drove in abject terror for another twenty minutes, resenting her authoritative and confident tone despite her incompetence. Common sense kicked in and I decided to take the next exit to stop at a petrol station and gather my senses. But as soon as I did so, Simone became agitated:

RE-ROUTING. RE-ROUTING. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT FROM THE ROUNDABOUT. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT.

Which was all very well but there was no roundabout. I continued on, frustrated and panicking, when lo and behold, one did materialize eventually. However, the highlighted route on the screen indicated the 2nd exit, not the 3rd. I decided to follow the Simone instead of the screen – she put me back on the wrong motorway. And then turned impatient and insisted, in a gratingly emotionless voice, that I make a U-Turn.

As this was happening, my husband called and asked me how my day was going. Hyperventilating and very close to tears, I yelled into the speaker phone: ‘I DON’T THINK WE’LL EVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN! SIMONE HAS HIJACKED ME!’ He calmly asked me who Simone was, and then suggested I cancel route guidance and enter the destination address again.

Which I did.

Simone returned sounding fresh, patient and unruffled and informed me smartly to keep driving on – I was on the correct motorway after all and in fact, just 15 minutes away from where I needed to be.

You’d think this was a freak incident, but the other day I wanted to go to a hardware store and typed in the postcode. Simone took me to the town sink-hole that had swallowed three driveways in one morning. She wanted me to go into it before she could say, ‘YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.’

I sometimes think Simone does this because she resents me since I’m the new woman in my husband’s life and have replaced her reign (or tyranny, whichever you prefer). I posited this theory to my husband who merely rolled his eyes and carried on watching his football match. However, I had my revenge last week when I changed the Satnav settings. Simone has now become a Sam and we are getting along famously, thank you very much!

Homebody Takes a Driving Test

I used to think that I knew how to drive; that it was a skill I had acquired when I braved the traffic of Shahrah-e-Faisal for 4 years in order to get to and from Karachi University. I was a hoyden on the road: racing buses and trucks and rickshaws – but studiously avoiding motorcycles. These last are a highway menace: swerving like broken pendulums on wheels as if the road was their little practice lane. If  you collided with one of them the class argument was sure to be whipped up:  YOU were the car owner and THEY weren’t, so naturally, everything was your fault.

So when I was told I’d have to pass the UK driving test and it was really hard, I pooh-poohed the notion. After all. How tough could it be? I was a Karachiite. I was a road demon. I laughed in the face of the UK highway code.

 The theory test was a breeze. I read a short booklet containing about 300 odd driving rules that were far easier to forget than comprehend; did some practice tests and then  passed the online test in 20 minutes. The examiner – a Pakistani Briton, said, ‘Ab Shazaf Shadaab ho gayee.’ I took a bow and headed off home, proud as can be.

When the day of the practical test rolled around, I was the picture of confidence. My driving instructor told me I had it in the bag if I could just hold my nerve, and I was grabbing on with iron fists. The examiner was a short, bearded man who explained the rules, asked me to take the seat and told me to show him how the windscreen would be de-fogged. Easy-peasy. Then it came time to drive.

I cruised along merrily, chatting, waiting to be told to turn right or left, or keep straight. And I jabbered away: did  he know I had been doing this for a while – that I was from Pakistan where driving was far harder, that I was thinking of doing a PGCE and also, fun fact: the man who executed Saint Albans was purported to have gone blind once he beheaded him? My examiner – Brian, nodded politely and continued with his instructions.

 ‘No seriously, the executioner’s eyes popped out. There’s a depiction of the scene in several glass paintings in Verulamium Cathedral’ I insisted while expertly leaving a roundabout on the third exit, checking the mirrors and indicating at all the correct times. Brian nodded politely and made me reverse round a corner, go up a hill and down an underpass and eventually returned us to the driving school.

I switched the car off and beamed at him. He coughed, looked down and declared I had failed.

My face and heart plummeted to the ground.

Failed, had he said?

Yes. I had failed in the first 5 minutes of the test because I hadn’t seen a pedestrian on a zebra crossing and that is a major offence. A stupid woman walking a stupid Dalmatian had crossed the road and I hadn’t waited for her to get completely off before driving ahead. Plus a portion of the Dalmatian’s tail was still wagging above the white line.

I had failed by the tip of a canine’s tail. (But then all those stripes and spots were a hazard for any erstwhile test taker.)

I was driven home in utter humiliation. If I hadn’t talked so much, focused more on the road, if I’d just slowed down, I’d be with a license. But now here I was: waiting to take another test to go through the process again in three month’s time because the test centers in the UK are always busy. I imagined Brian going into the little driving examiner’s coffee room and saying, ‘Man this woman wouldn’t shut up, and she almost drove over a dog. Failed in the first five minutes. Kept referring to her Karachi driving – apparently they like to run each other over on a regular basis there.’

People were nice enough about my test. They all said everyone failed at least once, so not to worry. I gave myself a pep talk and continued to lug heavy grocery bags uphill – with decreasing patience and growing resentment.

By the time my second test rolled around – I was not keeping my cool. I was nervous and hysterical and my driving instructor – a lovely man named Haj told me I would be okay if I just breathed. I snapped out that it was all too much – walking and sitting and breathing and driving – there was a limit to multitasking. And then I saw my examiner – a smiling old man named Gregg who called me Shaz and told me it would be okay and that I should stop hyperventilating otherwise he wouldn’t be able to continue the test. I didn’t talk. I gulped and coughed and repeated and confirmed every instruction before executing it. And all was well until, in the last 5 minutes, I exited a roundabout and made the car ahead slow down.

Here’s the rule for learners – you can’t make another car slow down on a test. The Karachiite woman driver in me doesn’t get it – I slowed people down all the time and they seemed to expect it and gave way accordingly. But here, as a learner, slowing traffic down instead of waiting for it is a major offence. I failed. Gregg didn’t help matters much: he kept going ‘Shaz… Shaz…Shaz…you almost had it. The pity of it! The pity of it!’ By the time the test ended I was comforting him.

People weren’t so kind this time. ‘Second time fail? Haw hai. I passed in the first go.’ It didn’t help that it was mostly my in-laws who said this – they are all expert drivers. I clenched my teeth and said nothing and went back to walking around trying to figure out the suburban bus network – since I was obviously never going to drive in the near future.

There was no reason for me to fail my tests, really: I had the most ideal conditions – prime time of no traffic at 9 a.m., fine, sunny weather and good health. The third time – everything was a mess. There was after-school traffic and the roads were jammed. There were harried mums and irresponsible school children jay walking everywhere. I was sick with the flu and nauseous. The half hour test lasted for one hour because all routes were jammed. And I had my first examiner – Brian – again, though he didn’t recall who I was which was lucky because I had no desire to be remembered.

I gave way. I waited. I manoeuvred all the while trying to retain the contents of my stomach. As we turned into the driving center’s car park (one which I was beginning to hate) we stopped and Brian looked at me. I looked at him, waiting, preparing for the worst. Maybe there was some stroller flap the breeze of my passing car had whipped up at too high a velocity or something ridiculous like that.

He whispered conspiratorially – ‘You’ve passed.’

I screamed and promptly started crying. Haj, who’d been waiting outside, saw me break down, ran inside and shook my shoulders. Brian coughed and looked embarrassed and filled in my pass certificate. I was driven off – triumphant but exhausted. I had done it – I was a UK driver. Which was fabulous, because I would boldly go where everyone went all the time – but on a freaking car this time! Yeah man!

But then, when your car is a Mercedes and you have a navigation system out to kill you – driving can seem a much more daunting experience. But THAT is another blog post.

HOMEBODY MISSES HER MOMMY

Back when I first started blogging, I often struggled with bitterness over how I had ended up fat, divorced and stuck. But when days got really terrible and positivity was elusive, I scoured my brain to figure out what I had that other people did not. And the answer I always came back to was the same: I had my Mommy. Arthritic, hypertensive and opinionated she may be, but always the light of my life.

Not that we were at peace with each other. We were too alike. You see, once you return home after you’ve been married – a struggle takes place. Your mother is ready to take care of you but you don’t need her in that capacity. You don’t need limits set on how to dress and where to go and what to say, you don’t need the ‘I told you sos’ and you  certainly don’t require the lectures on how to properly conduct yourself with modesty so as to best attract further proposals so that you can get married again as soon as possible. It didn’t help that my dad had died six months before I ended my first marriage – so my mum and I were two grieving women, suffering loss in different ways and not quite knowing how to grieve.

There were fights – unbelievably cruel accusations were hurled by both sides. I remember the worst night was when I physically pushed my mum out of my room and told her that she was miserable and hateful from behind my closed door. She yelled right back and told me that I was selfish and disobedient and deserved everything I was getting.  What followed was a deathly silent night before I went back to her room, crawled into her bed and hugged her in the early light of dawn. She hugged back because, like me, she too had spent a sleepless night regretting her words and anger.

We hated and loved in equal measures. What got us through it was the knowledge that come what may, we were in this together and if anyone tried to hurt us, we’d band together and forge a united front. But in the absence of a common enemy, we were lost.

This time, this horrible, fractious time changed something very basic between me and mum – we realized that to actually establish a genuine relationship, the struggle for power had to go away. I see many of my friends with their mums – chained to them – their approval, their scorn, their responsibility towards them. I see mothers guilting their sons and daughters into obedience; unthinkingly limiting their lives and opportunities because it is a widely perceived notion in sub continental culture that a daughter or son is a future investment for a parent: old age becomes a loan on which interest is owed whether the principle is available or not.

But that was not the case with my mother. She realized she no longer needed to ‘take care’ of me – three joint therapy sessions made her understand that. But that meant that I also had to accept her as a separate human being – with needs and wants that didn’t involve me. It was a joint separation into maturity.

Women, as Nancy Friday once said, can be each other’s greatest jailers and liberators. A relationship becomes free only when manipulation ends. Mothers manipulate their daughters into adulthood and daughters learn the same game in inverse – knowing which strings to pull and pressure points to press to hurt and guilt into getting what they want. But Ammi and I stopped becoming mum and daughter – we became friends. I was freed from all obligations to ‘take care’ of my mum in her old age – partly because it wasn’t needed, partly because I saw her as another individual who, like me, needed to make it on her own because I couldn’t possibly carry her weight and still live a full life. She took baby steps too:  letting me drive at night and go to strange places and meet strange men whom it was necessary to meet for the purposes of marketing my novel. She realized that her fears were her own and imposing them on me wasn’t parenting, it was smothering.

When I decided to get married and settle in London, I was gutted because it meant leaving a woman who had given birth to me, taken care of me and then gone through the very difficult process of letting me go (it is the last process that most parents can’t endure and therefore avoid).

And yet, she is the only woman in this world who is as interested in me as I am. My presence is her Eid, Diwali and Christmas all rolled into one. She prays for me, hurts for me and roots for me all the while telling me what’s wrong with me. The highlight of coming home to Karachi is to walk out of the arrival gates at Jinnah and see her, tasbeeh in hand and dupatta on head, anxiously waiting for me to walk out, beaming when I have done so and then immediately handing her cell phone to me to call the driver because when I am present, all mobile related duties will invariably fall on me and she no longer needs to bother with ufone and bad signals and the mystifying world of smart phones for a week or two.

By the same token, leaving Karachi means hugging her goodbye, watching her stand alone behind the railings, knowing that she will return to an empty house and feel empty for a while. To call her after immigration is to realize that she has regressed from being a physical presence to a voice on the phone. Returning to the UK, I skype her and am gutted when I realize, as the wonderful poet Noorulain Noor puts it, that her sky is different from mine.

It is a mini-death, this separation.

But Ammi has given me the gift of letting me know that she not only will she be fine without me, she’ll live life to the fullest and enjoy herself. And in the process, she has become a role model – someone comfortable with separation and loneliness and still managing to garner enthusiasm and joy in life. I can cry in the shower and miss the scent of her perfume and our chai sessions in her bed – but  I know that happiness – not residual but whole-hearted, full-throated laughter-kind,  is still possible. One just has to exert oneself, like she does.

Ammi is a woman comfortable with discomfort and she’s helping me become the same. And in being a strong woman, she has given me the greatest gift any mother can give to her daughter.

HOMEBODY SQUEEZES INTO BRITAIN

With my expansive girth, I find London a very tight fit. My husband lovingly calls me a hobbit – and it’s not because of hairy feet. I waddle along well below the national height average but still get stuck between doorways, payment tills and public places which my taller, slimmer compatriots have no issues navigating.

Yesterday, for instance, we went to see the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square. We reached a half hour early, but were told that there was no more space for newcomers – fine hundred attendees and the place was full. In the distance, I saw a large stage on which a Chinese diplomat droned on in extended monotone. A colourful dragon stood behind, waiting for him to finish so that it could start its dance. But we were not to witness the excitement, because London has very little room for Londoners. So we followed the easily-resigned hoardes into China Town. The main road (road is a misleading term – in London they are basically the size of a suburban American footpath, dutifully carrying the full load of taxis, double decker buses, cars, bikes all at once) was clogged with more bodies. I moved into a side-lane and promptly got stuck between blonde Nordic men and women who towered above my head and would have stepped on me had  my beloved husband not whisked me away into a Turkish restaurant (which was roughly the size of my mum’s bathroom in Karachi). I ate a baklava and waited for the cobbled streets to clear before returning home.

Space is my one constant enemy here. My fridge and freezer are the size of small side tables so that grocery shopping must be done in bits and bobs. There is room, for example, for 3 onions and 5 tomatoes and perhaps 2 lemons in the vegetable section. To introduce a cucumber or aubergine into the mix is to incur violence upon the plastic drawer that has since cracked in my efforts to make it hold something a little more substantial. Items have to be piled precariously on top of each other on the one shelf I have: and some forgotten tube of passata invariably oozes out after a few days so that the entire refrigerator has to be emptied and cleaned and the whole rigmarole of putting things back starts again.

I am told my apartment is large by London standards. Huge, in fact. But I had an Audrey Hepburn moment when she, upon entering Gregory Peck’s modest studio in Roman Holiday, imperiously asks whether they had entered the elevator. I was not quite as ignorant – I just walked into our bedroom and exclaimed ‘Nice closet.’ When my husband told me that this was our bedroom and that another closet needed to be fitted inside it, my mind immediately started wondering how I’d fit all my stuff anywhere.

The real luxury of my living situation, apparently, is that I have two bathrooms. But they are not called that: here, we have wet rooms – boasting the singular quality of not drying after a two minute shower. Why living in the land of constant rain a wet room is a selling point for a property I’ll never know. But they are compact and one can shampoo one’s hair and reach for the toothbrush above the sink and flush the toilet without necessarily extending one’s reach. Everything in Britain’s houses is an arm’s length away. Provided you have very short arms.

So precious a commodity is space that washing machines are provided without driers. One would imagine that the dryer would occupy a sacred space in the British household – garlanded and enshrined for being a shelter of warmth in a dank, cold world. So I stare at wet socks and bras all day and by the time they dry, I have a new load of dirty laundry to wash and put in its place. And there’s no discreet balcony to air these items. You have a corridor and a small clothes’ stand – that’s all.

My body too suffers under the very necessary squeeze of Western clothing. Summers here are like the coldest Karachi days and layering is really the only way to keep hypothermia at bay. So every day I put on underwear, thermals, clothes and then a sweater. And this is if I’m indoors. To go out – I must put on a five tonne puffer jacket, a woollen scarf that wraps itself around my nostrils like an anaconda and a woollen cap to make sure my ear-drums don’t freeze. I venture out like this – a moving pile of clothing that joins other mounds making their way on footpaths-called-roads trying to squeeze into tooth-paste shaped trains called Tubes, inhaling arm-pit fragrance and trying their best not to stare up into other people’s  nostrils.

It’s been a squeeze, to say the least. But things are getting better. I no longer get stuck behind the kitchen counter – nor suffer attacks of claustrophobia when I enter my house – my brain has oriented itself to UK dimensions. I have shrunk and am glad this cold, dark country has accommodated itself around homebody – who is just beginning to wriggle around and make her way in it.

The Return of the Homebody

Okay, okay. You said I'd come back, and you were right.
So a lot has happened - I've published a novel  and it's done quite well. I've sort of transfered this blog onto wordpress here and I do hope all you who read this come back, even if it's just to say, 'I told you so!!'