Summer Note

 “Lila! Did you double-check the bag? Are you a hundred percent sure everything is packed?”

Lila was shaken out of her stupor by her mother’s panicky voice. She had spent the last hour running around the house, making sure all was arranged for Lila’s imminent departure. And now standing at the doorway, she glared at her daughter as sweat trickled down her brow. “Lila!” She always said her daughter’s name with a weird gravity, dragging the la and ending it with an H. No one ever said it like she did.

Lila nodded in affirmation. And smiled at her mother’s unsatisfied scowl as she turned around, grumbling about Lila not even bothering to speak out loud.

But Lila couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about that. There was something about that summer day which made her just want to lie down. A subtle laziness cast over everything, even the bee circling over the glass of juice seemed lazy. Lila chuckled as she could still hear her mother’s muttering.

She was going to miss this.

After her mother had walked away, no doubt to do some final touchups on the already packed clothes, something hit Lila. At that moment, the fact that she was leaving, finally leaving to experience things previously unknown to her, had just become more tangible. She was going to be independent. Well, as independent as an eighteen year old girl in Pakistan could be.

 And the thought was terrifying. Many would assume that freedom was the cause of this apprehension. However, it was something else, a profound fear of having to meet and trust new people. Unlike most girls around her, Lila had enjoyed a fair amount of liberty. Her family was a visionary when it came to raising kids. Her mother, Khadija Kayani, an educated house-wife, had grown up in semi-poverty with a sense of longing for all things new and improved. She married Khalid Kayani, a man who had built himself up from the bottom of the barrel and earned enough to satisfy most of his wife’s needs. Not that she needed a lot. Khadija had never been one for dresses and jewelry. The sparkle of diamonds and shine of gold had never really evoked her fancy. She wanted books and the latest information in her house. Sporting and art equipment so her kids could experience life the way it was supposed to be experienced. She showed her kids Disney movies for heaven’s sake. No middle class Pakistani watches Disney movies; the idea was very rare in the city of Gujranwala. Her kids were fluent in 3 languages and had deep interests in topics which their peers loathed. Making friends had been difficult for them but the ones they made always won their mothers approval. All in all, Lila had lived a pretty exuberant life. The rules imposed on her were the absolute musts, ones without which no good child could be raised. And what her mother refused to allow her, she always had a good reason and as Lila grew to realize, she was always right.

Looking out of the bedroom window at the beautiful plants her mother had so lovingly placed just outside the fenestration, she reflected on her childhood and was happy with how it had been spent. So no, she couldn’t say that her life within her house was bound by tedious rules. Freedom wasn’t what scared her. The thing that absolutely terrified her was the inescapable arrival of multiple new people in her life. Lila wasn’t good with people. Although in more honesty, she was pretty okay with people. She could talk and carry a conversation, she could be funny. It was the idea of trusting people that she sucked at actualizing. She was always scared that people would cheat her; they would lie to her and about her. These things constituted her most horrible nightmares. Friends turn out to be enemies, her secrets spewed everywhere. People pitying her, laughing at her, sneering and talking behind her back, yadda yadda yadda.

Not Trusting people .It had been a difficult hurdle to overcome and was not something she was proud of. In many ways, Lila believed her mother had contributed to this dreadful trait of hers. Lila looked over to the doorway where her mother had been standing a few minutes ago.

Khadija Kayani was one the most curious cases of Asian mothers Asia had ever seen. Strict in the way all Pakistani mothers absolutely have to be yet she had never stopped her children from getting new experiences. But sometimes these experiences contributed to separating Lila from those around her. A deep mistrust of people had been gradually growing and had reached a point where hardly anyone outside her family knew what Lila was like. Her mother had told her “you can talk to me about anything and tell me everything. I will not judge I will listen” and she had done exactly that. Her kids told her everything, and she was always there to listen.

This was fine but she had also instigated another belief in her children “do not tell anyone outside what happens in your house, in your heart. People outside are not like you. They will not keep your secret. They will turn and spill those secrets for gains of their own. What is yours should be yours” all of this had undoubtedly been said with good intentions, to protect her children but Lila’s mistrust of people had grown to the point that even telling someone she was in trouble felt like a sin. She believed her troubles, fears and hardships belonged only to her and should be kept deep inside her heart. Asking for help seemed impossible.

Sunlight streamed in and cast a soft golden glow all over the room. It was a hot summer day, one of the hottest. But somehow the heat wasn’t bothering Lila. Not at that instant. Life was, at that moment, in a perfect stillness. It seemed, a calm hush had overtaken the surroundings. But the still and quiet was only in her mind. She knew, outside that room her mother was calling for her siblings in a voice much louder than necessary. She heard her father cursing at the heat as he cleaned the bonnet of his car. Lila smiled again.

 She was going to miss this.

There was noise outside, all around her. But it didn’t feel like noise does. It felt like a familiar note, blending in with her melody (Perhaps a little out of tune). All these notes along with the consistent swish of the fan were something so intimate, so familiar. Like white noise, calm and constant, it blended into the background seamlessly.

This quiet noise crept inside Lila, just within her, hushing the doubts and anxieties momentarily as she reminisced about her mother and her contribution to all that Lila was and all she could be.

Glancing at the clock Lila heaved a sigh and lay down on her bed. It was 3:28 PM, a little more than an hour till she left. In her excitement she had gotten ready about an hour too soon and had been sitting in her room ever since. She closed her eyes and imagined what her new life would be like.

Would she be able to survive this new unchartered ground? Lila had learned to fend for herself, she could survive alone. But the question was how she would survive being not-alone. Living in a hostel with dozens of other girls, sharing her room with two other students. A whole new class room filled with new faces. No family to vent to. And what about friends, Lila needed friends, everyone does. So far she had spent her entire life at the same school with the same faces. Finding new friends seemed like a daunting task. Would she even have friends or would she be the weird kid that sits alone. Lila shuddered at the thought. No, she would definitely make friends, loyal ones that would appreciate her and understand her. Thinking of these soon to be friends, feeling the hot air from the fan on her face Lila dozed off to sleep.

All too soon her mother was calling her name. Lila opened her eyes to see her mother sitting at the edge of the bed, looking at her daughter with a look that Lila couldn’t quite place.

 “Lila”, she said as she brushed a hand over Lila’s forehead, “it’s time to go”.

 Sometime over the past hour the sun had shifted a little and the room seemed darker but the sky was bright outside, blue and inviting, a promise of a good start. And also of the sweltering heat that would accompany their 4 hour journey.

About fifteen minutes and a few minor bumps  later Lila was sitting in the back seat of her parent’s car, all three of her bags accompanying her, on the road to college. She, surprisingly, had not cried and even more surprisingly, her little brother had, he had hugged her and said I’ll miss you. Who would’ve thought?

Her parents had had spent the entire time making sure the kids at home would be taking care of themselves as they would be back quite late. No tears shed on their part but at least one of them was bound to cry then they dropped her off. Lila just knew it.

She glanced out the window as the car sped on. A whole new reality, a new life, a new home, a new bed-

Lila gasped. The bed sheets, she had forgotten to pack the bed sheets.

Her mother instantly looked over her shoulder at Lila, “What’s the matter? Are you okay?” she said as her father cast a cursory glance through the rear view mirror.

Lila did her best to not melt under her gaze as she told them about the bed sheets.

 “They were on my side table and I completely forgot to pick the up”

For the second time that day her family surprised her, as neither of them looked angry. Not at her at least. They were arguing with each other trying to decide what would be more convenient, going back to the house or getting entirely new ones at a nearby store.

Lila left them to it, thinking of their voices as familiar notes she would soon have to remove from her melody and went back to looking out the window, mind filled with the thought of her upcoming orientation. 7 days of getting to know new people, she would laugh and talk with them, make friends. And thus would end the dog days of summer, the sun would rise over a new spring of her life and the bleak autumn of Margalla hills.

“There’s absolutely no way we are going all the way back we are way too far along now”, her father’s deep voice pulled her out of her reverie and Lila smiled as she rested her head against the cool glass of the window.

She was going to miss this.