The Owls

The wallpaper was expensive, as were all the other upgrades in our three-bedroom apartment in a gated community in the midst of the city–wooden floors, intricate crown molding, baseboard trims, granite tops in the kitchen and bathrooms, tall windows that added drama to the rooms, a red brick wall in the family room, and white marble tiles in the large balcony, to name a few. Adding further character and depth to an already impressive ambiance,  were custom-made curtains, color coordinated with the pastel walls in every room, handmade Afghan rugs, and select pieces of the famed rosewood Chinioti furniture. Our home was an unarguable gem in Karachi, a city of over 17 million, torn with inflation and rife with crime, water shortage, and constant power outages. Where millions were struggling just to make ends meet, it was nothing short of an oasis, coveted by whoever saw it. 

I grew up seeing the wallpaper in my room but I never outgrew it. In fact, it grew on me.

 A much loved only child, the pale yellow, heavily textured wallpaper had been selected by my father over a decade ago for my then eight-year-old self, and that pleasurable glee I had felt when I first laid eyes on it remained fresh in my mind, unfaded with the passage of time. I first saw it a month before we moved into the house. I immediately loved the color and the feel of the bumpy texture as I ran my hand over it. But the design, in shades of yellow and brown, was confusing for a young child. A watercolor tree with five owls perched on various branches. Set a few inches apart, the design repeated throughout the paper. The owls were very cute, their wide open eyes reflecting their enthusiasm for life, or perhaps it was my own enthusiasm that I saw projected within their eyes. Three owls perched upright while two hung upside down, in obvious frolic. 

“Why the owls, Baba?” I had asked my father.  

“Because owls are very wise,” he had replied.

“But if they’re wise, why are they hanging upside down?” I was a precocious child and my father had answers to whatever intrigued my curiosity. 

“Because even the wisest need to take time out for fun.” 

I had nodded. Whatever my father told me always made all the sense in the world. That was a lesson in itself, the first lesson I learned from my new friends; no matter how tedious things got, time had to be taken out to enjoy the little things. 

“If they are so wise, why do they sleep all day?” I questioned their nocturnal nature. 

“So that they would have all the peace and quiet of the night to cook up their wisdom.” 

It had made perfect sense then and it continued to make sense over the years. Solitude, reflection, and silence lend voices to ideas that are otherwise sadly crippled by the chaos and pandemonium of the day. 

Every night, as I lay in bed in my new room, I would invariably wonder about the wisdom of the birds on my walls, some upright, some upside down, because they were the last thing in my view in the muted light of the streetlamp sifting in through the open window on balmy Karachi nights before my eyelids finally surrendered to blissful sleep. 

As time passed, the wallpaper grew on me. The owls became my faithful companions who stayed up with me when I stayed up late studying for exams. When I had friends visit, they frolicked with us, and when I was in a pensive mood, their sagacity helped me unravel the dilemmas of my convoluted thoughts. In my late teens, many relatives and cousins started teasing me about the very ‘childish’  paper on my walls. 

“You should change it now. You’re too old for this,” they’d all say more or less the same thing in varying combinations of words. I would just smile in response. 

“Look, the paper is ripping at the edges,” someone’s keen eye would pick out the slightly curled edges of the seams closer to the windows, the areas that bore the most brunt of the blistering heat and humid air.  

“It’s not ripping,” I would explain. “It’s just getting loose. Needs a little glue and it’ll be fine.”

The wallpaper became more precious during the COVID stay-at-home months when all life was confined within the four walls. My birds and I became even closer. I would ask the wise ones why the world was suddenly in a lurch. 

‘Does it matter?’ the eyes of upside-down sages would twinkle. ‘It’ll right itself, in good time, as all things do.' 

And as promised, it had righted itself. 

Three years later, the pandemic was over. The wallpaper was getting noticeably crinkly. Though I had ideas for quick fixes, being in college barely gave me time to carry them out. 

“Samina, your wallpaper is getting ragged,” Ammi said to me one morning, exaggerating things. She was the master of hyperbole and we all knew it very well. 

“Yes, I have to do something about it,” I replied hurriedly, as I ate my breakfast. My college van was about to come. It wasn’t the first time we were having this conversation. 

I knew she was right, it needed to be fixed. Ammi wanted things in absolute order and the crinkling paper had now started to irk her on a serious note. 

“I’ll have Majeed take care of it,” I heard her say as I strode to the door. “Don’t know when he’ll  be able to find time for it though.”

Majeed was our nifty, on-call handyman for all the little issues around the house for which Baba had no time, from malfunctioning water geysers to ceiling fans that needed oiling.

“Okay, I’ll be late today. I have group study,” I hastily informed her as I left.  

Ammi, pleased with the green signal that I had finally given her for the wallpaper, immediately set about locating Majeed.  

I came home at around five p.m. 

As I climbed up the stairs to get to our second-floor apartment, I saw our neighbor’s seven-year-old Yahya seated on the warm stairs with scissors in hand, dextrously working on a faded yellow piece of paper. The shade was uncannily familiar. 

“What are you cutting, Yahya?” I was curious. At the same time, a strange sense of foreboding, chilly and dark,  started to creep around my heart, making it thump louder and louder by the second.  

Yahya looked up and I saw what he was cutting out–a little owl with bright eyes. I knew that face. I knew those eyes. 

“Where did you get that?” I asked incredulously, praying that it wasn’t one of my friends he was cutting out.  

“Majeed bhai was taking out all the paper to throw from your house and I asked him if I could have a little piece,” he informed me busily. 

I couldn’t believe my ears. I ran up the remaining steps and rang the bell. Ammi opened the door. I mumbled hello to her, and walked straight to my room.  

“I was able to find Majeed today and he was able to come in even though he had elsewhere to go. It was a nice favor,” she spoke from the kitchen. “Your room looks really clean now. It needs paint and you can decide which shade you want.”

I could barely hear what she was saying. I was speechless as I stood in my room. The blank walls stared dismally at me as if lamenting the loss of long-time companions, coaxing me to join hands with them in grief. The late afternoon sun was still bright as it streamed in through the window mesh but the golden hue was no longer reflecting off of the previously golden walls. Things looked so…hopeless. 

My friends were gone. 

My wise, sage companions were gone. 

All those years of shared contemplation, musings, and reflection were gone with a few savage rips and tears. Nothing was left behind but the ugly streaks of dried glue and a few scraps and shards of memories on the wall. 

A deep sense of loss and regret overwhelmed my heart for the five figures that were not simply a print on paper but an etching within me.