Photo by Raza Ali
Broken Melodies, Singing Walls
Hiba Heba
Sobia aunty is in love with her listeners. They are so quiet; she thinks they are entranced by her euphonious preaching. She goes on and recites a couple more Arabic verses from the holy book she has held so delicately in her abluted palms, almost like a beggar holding an empty pot by the stalls of Sunday bazaar. She throttles her listeners with stories of defiant women, how Nuzzat Baji’s daughter gave up her modesty to elope with the boy next door. Modesty, to Sobia aunty, is a grave matter. “Tobah! Tobah!” she shudders, shaking her head, which is covered with a shawl, almost resembling saran-wrapped china bowls.
Nuzzat Baji’s daughter has been banished from these religious gatherings. Girls who talk to boys are subject to such banishment. But Nuzzat Baji’s daughter did not just talk to that reticent ash-eyed guy; (they thought) she fell in love with the halcyon sex he offered. He did not order her around the house to flip chapattis on the skillet like her father did. Her father never understood how important it is for a woman to converse with her solitude, to daydream by the tarnished stove about singing songs she wrote. Nuzzat Baji’s daughter often told her younger brothers that Urdu is a beautiful language, that all the birds on the jamun tree in the backyard hum their mantras in Urdu. “You just have to decipher one sound from another,” she instructed them wisely.
Once she mustered up some courage to ask her elder brother to let her post a recording of her new song on YouTube. “Salar Bhai, I want to be as captivating as Madame Abida Parveen. I want to share my singing-soul with people around the world. It’s my dream to garner that kind of confidence that can allow me to ascend to another place.” Salar was not interested in her philosophical justifications. He kept wiping his motorcycle’s mirror and uttered in a perfunctory tone, “Acha, but only post an audio recording and don’t put your photo on YouTube okay? Otherwise I will tell Papa.”
Ghazal wanted it to be perfect. Her two younger brothers offered to create music by tapping spoons on the glossy exterior of unused Tupperware. She liked that. She always welcomed spontaneous creativity. They rehearsed the melody for days. She cleared her throat before every rehearsal and sometimes invoked her muse, Abida Parveen, in her initial verses to enter a trance-like state that helped her unfurl. Sometimes her brothers invited Zafar uncle’s son, Khalid, to join them in their mellifluous escapade; his job was to clap softly after every four syllables sung by Ghazal. She felt liberated in those moments. It reminded her of her short vacation to Lahore when she traveled in her second cousin’s slick-black Civic for the first time. She enjoyed the cool air-conditioned interior of the car; it smelled different, like someone had sprayed an expensive perfume on the rustling arid leaves of the jamun tree in her house.
Khalid knew that his elder brother was ardent about singing too. He once secretly recorded his brother humming a Bollywood song and made Ghazal listen to his malleable legato. At first Ghazal thought it was Khalid parroting the voice of an adult, but Khalid confirmed that it was indeed his brother. “How can this be your brother? How old is Moiz again?” “Twenty-one!” Khalid exclaimed bashfully. Ghazal was shocked, and equally impressed. She had never come across a man whose voice was soft like a purring cat and melodious as the sharpest chirrup of a sparrow. It brought tears to her kohl-laden eyes. Khalid teased her that she was crying because she found his brother’s voice soulful while Moiz Bhai cried in his pillow because Abbu forbid him to pursue singing as a career. Ghazal was baffled again and now equally fascinated. “Your brother cries? But isn’t he twenty-one?” Khalid nodded with confusion.
Since then, Ghazal daydreamed of Moiz. She sang a duet with him in her reveries. She watched him cry when he relayed a tragic folktale to her; she watched him cry in his bedroom like all her girlfriends did after their parents went to sleep. She was smitten with his womanly bravado. Eventually they started a virtual relationship. She had named herself “Sureeli Chirya” (Melodious Bird) on her Facebook account. They mostly talked about singing and how their parents had violent tendencies. One day, Ghazal’s father found out about her YouTube channel and twisted her arm until she promised him she would not sing for the public again. Her father commanded her mother to start finding suitable rishtas for her: “All girls who go astray must be married off at once!”
In the cricket-silence of the night she ordered an Uber using the Chinese smartphone Moiz had gifted her through Khalid. She texted Moiz that she was craving the air-conditioned peacefulness of a posh car, and pleaded him to come along. She liked that Moiz did not stop her. She liked that he craved what she craved. They never returned.
Sobia aunty always invites Ghazal’s mother and younger sister to these holy gatherings. “Of course Ghazal’s vulgar crime is not your fault, you were always a good mother to her,” she chimes in sarcastically. Nuzzat Baji either smiles wearily or looks at her feet, remorse bombarding the angels on her shoulders. “Alhamdulillah, my daughter never even thought of going astray,” Sobia aunty continues. After her theatrical religious lecture and a litany of godly accusations, she takes her sleepy listeners to her daughter’s room, pointing at a spot on the floor as if pointing at a relic in a museum. “Aliyah used to pray here. Last Ramadan, she prayed for a decent husband every time she performed sujud, and today she is bearing his child Mashallah.”
Ghazal’s sister pictures how Aliyah was always praying for a peculiar decent man when she could dream of singing instead. “Did she ever write her own songs?” She looks around the room quizzically, still longing to stumble upon Ghazal’s vivacious mirage somewhere between the mauve walls. Sobia aunty is still convulsing with pride, as if someone has switched on a discarded energy-saving bulb on the slope of her wide forehead and asked her to dance while trying to balance its cumbersome weight–a garland of trinkets. It almost looks like she is teetering with an orgasm, but what does she know about that.
Hiba Heba
Sobia aunty is in love with her listeners. They are so quiet; she thinks they are entranced by her euphonious preaching. She goes on and recites a couple more Arabic verses from the holy book she has held so delicately in her abluted palms, almost like a beggar holding an empty pot by the stalls of Sunday bazaar. She throttles her listeners with stories of defiant women, how Nuzzat Baji’s daughter gave up her modesty to elope with the boy next door. Modesty, to Sobia aunty, is a grave matter. “Tobah! Tobah!” she shudders, shaking her head, which is covered with a shawl, almost resembling saran-wrapped china bowls.
Nuzzat Baji’s daughter has been banished from these religious gatherings. Girls who talk to boys are subject to such banishment. But Nuzzat Baji’s daughter did not just talk to that reticent ash-eyed guy; (they thought) she fell in love with the halcyon sex he offered. He did not order her around the house to flip chapattis on the skillet like her father did. Her father never understood how important it is for a woman to converse with her solitude, to daydream by the tarnished stove about singing songs she wrote. Nuzzat Baji’s daughter often told her younger brothers that Urdu is a beautiful language, that all the birds on the jamun tree in the backyard hum their mantras in Urdu. “You just have to decipher one sound from another,” she instructed them wisely.
Once she mustered up some courage to ask her elder brother to let her post a recording of her new song on YouTube. “Salar Bhai, I want to be as captivating as Madame Abida Parveen. I want to share my singing-soul with people around the world. It’s my dream to garner that kind of confidence that can allow me to ascend to another place.” Salar was not interested in her philosophical justifications. He kept wiping his motorcycle’s mirror and uttered in a perfunctory tone, “Acha, but only post an audio recording and don’t put your photo on YouTube okay? Otherwise I will tell Papa.”
Ghazal wanted it to be perfect. Her two younger brothers offered to create music by tapping spoons on the glossy exterior of unused Tupperware. She liked that. She always welcomed spontaneous creativity. They rehearsed the melody for days. She cleared her throat before every rehearsal and sometimes invoked her muse, Abida Parveen, in her initial verses to enter a trance-like state that helped her unfurl. Sometimes her brothers invited Zafar uncle’s son, Khalid, to join them in their mellifluous escapade; his job was to clap softly after every four syllables sung by Ghazal. She felt liberated in those moments. It reminded her of her short vacation to Lahore when she traveled in her second cousin’s slick-black Civic for the first time. She enjoyed the cool air-conditioned interior of the car; it smelled different, like someone had sprayed an expensive perfume on the rustling arid leaves of the jamun tree in her house.
Khalid knew that his elder brother was ardent about singing too. He once secretly recorded his brother humming a Bollywood song and made Ghazal listen to his malleable legato. At first Ghazal thought it was Khalid parroting the voice of an adult, but Khalid confirmed that it was indeed his brother. “How can this be your brother? How old is Moiz again?” “Twenty-one!” Khalid exclaimed bashfully. Ghazal was shocked, and equally impressed. She had never come across a man whose voice was soft like a purring cat and melodious as the sharpest chirrup of a sparrow. It brought tears to her kohl-laden eyes. Khalid teased her that she was crying because she found his brother’s voice soulful while Moiz Bhai cried in his pillow because Abbu forbid him to pursue singing as a career. Ghazal was baffled again and now equally fascinated. “Your brother cries? But isn’t he twenty-one?” Khalid nodded with confusion.
Since then, Ghazal daydreamed of Moiz. She sang a duet with him in her reveries. She watched him cry when he relayed a tragic folktale to her; she watched him cry in his bedroom like all her girlfriends did after their parents went to sleep. She was smitten with his womanly bravado. Eventually they started a virtual relationship. She had named herself “Sureeli Chirya” (Melodious Bird) on her Facebook account. They mostly talked about singing and how their parents had violent tendencies. One day, Ghazal’s father found out about her YouTube channel and twisted her arm until she promised him she would not sing for the public again. Her father commanded her mother to start finding suitable rishtas for her: “All girls who go astray must be married off at once!”
In the cricket-silence of the night she ordered an Uber using the Chinese smartphone Moiz had gifted her through Khalid. She texted Moiz that she was craving the air-conditioned peacefulness of a posh car, and pleaded him to come along. She liked that Moiz did not stop her. She liked that he craved what she craved. They never returned.
Sobia aunty always invites Ghazal’s mother and younger sister to these holy gatherings. “Of course Ghazal’s vulgar crime is not your fault, you were always a good mother to her,” she chimes in sarcastically. Nuzzat Baji either smiles wearily or looks at her feet, remorse bombarding the angels on her shoulders. “Alhamdulillah, my daughter never even thought of going astray,” Sobia aunty continues. After her theatrical religious lecture and a litany of godly accusations, she takes her sleepy listeners to her daughter’s room, pointing at a spot on the floor as if pointing at a relic in a museum. “Aliyah used to pray here. Last Ramadan, she prayed for a decent husband every time she performed sujud, and today she is bearing his child Mashallah.”
Ghazal’s sister pictures how Aliyah was always praying for a peculiar decent man when she could dream of singing instead. “Did she ever write her own songs?” She looks around the room quizzically, still longing to stumble upon Ghazal’s vivacious mirage somewhere between the mauve walls. Sobia aunty is still convulsing with pride, as if someone has switched on a discarded energy-saving bulb on the slope of her wide forehead and asked her to dance while trying to balance its cumbersome weight–a garland of trinkets. It almost looks like she is teetering with an orgasm, but what does she know about that.