Forever Friends

Somi: I saw a very violent movie the other day.
Me: Oh yeah? Which one?
Somi: I don’t know the name … it was about some Japanese girl who’s family gets killed and then she takes revenge. She’s like just one girl, but she kills about a hundred people. In one scene, she’s fighting about fifty people at once ... all alone.
I’m racking my brain. Arfiman, not so much.
Arfiman: Are you talking about Kill Bill?
Somi nods vigorously (in agreement).Arfiman is now mystified.
Arfiman: But it’s not Japanese.
Somi: I don’t know ... it had that Japanese girl in it ….

And I just shake my head with a knowing smile. Kill Bill is not Japanese. Uma Thurman doesn’t look Japanese. She’s a bloody blonde for Pete’s sake.

But that’s just Somi for you. She can put a smile on your face. And in my case, she can love you more than you’re ever been loved by a friend.

They say that truly loving someone means accepting them with all their faults. I’ve always thought of myself as a very difficult person to truly love: I have too many expectations and too little patience, I can be too cold-hearted and too hot-tempered, I can be cruel and hold a grudge and I can be selfish and inconsiderate. Those are all hazards of being close to me.

For that reason, there is no one I have not had a fight with. Except Somi. Wait, let me correct myself …. she is perhaps the only person in the whole world who has never been the cause of one of our fights. Sure we’ve fought a handful of times, but never her fault.

She’s perhaps the only friend in the whole world I’m sure loves me more than she loves anybody else. After her parents and her siblings, I know there is nobody more important to her than I. But that’s all gone and changed now.

Now she is married and I will no longer be able to run down the stairs and do my special double-knock, to find her at the door. She will be in another house.

All of a sudden, she isn’t next door. Not in another flat, but in another city … in another country. So what if I moved to Dubai. She was always there when I went back. She’s not going to be anymore. Why are some things so hard to let go of?

I’ve never cried at a rukhsati …. not even mine. But on hers, I felt like somebody was wrenching my heart out.

Tussi jaa rahey ho? Tussi na jao …

Planning matching outfits for 14th August: tacky green kameez with white dupatta and shalwar. The tailor not finishing them in time and us panicking. Convincing the tailor to come in on a weekend to finish our outfits. Realizing that Somi looked infinitely better in green than I did. And in yellow.

Daily walks to the park in Block 8. Lying our way in when they told us it’s only for Block 8 residents. Then lying about it everyday ... pretending we DID live in block 8, because there was no park for Block 16. Mangal bazaar. My god, Mangal Bazaar: unending deliberations over suit pieces. Hassan square ki chaat: walking all the way for a 15 rupee plate and then sharing because we didn’t have enough money to buy a whole chaat each.

That fateful Pizza Hut afternoon where I felt like a salad and dragged her with me. When our salad came, she suddenly remembered that SHE WAS FASTING. Face-painting stalls in the annual funfair in the Apartments. Secret crushes: sometimes on the same guy, but never a problem. French fries with lots of ketchup and chaat masala. KDA market and Sindhi Muslim ka KFC. Tariq Road and Dolmen mall.

Staying up all nightto watch Titanic with her cousins. That Najam Shiraz video. How late we got and how mad our parents got at us.

Stitching classes in Nisa Club. LOL. Nobody but Somi could have dragged me there. We did so many things with each other that we would have done with no one else. We’re fire and water, my Somi and I. Whoever’s been with us for a little while can’t help wondering how two such opposites can be so close. She’s the Bianco for my Nero. The Yin for my Yang.

If I had known that those moments I so took for granted wouldn’t last forever, I would have taken more time to savor them. What about our ‘special handshake’ that we invented in the eighth grade and never grew out of?

We didn’t even forget on her rukhsati. There she was in her bridal outfitand me in my finery … doing our ‘special handshake’. We must have looked mad.

My god, we WERE mad.

It’s not a big deal, I tell myself. How many days do I spend in Karachi anyway? Maybe ten in a whole year. Twenty at the most. That’s the point.

But how can I be in Karachi and not spend half of my time with Somi.

How? After practically living in her balcony for years … sitting on the cool, marble-mosaic floor, looking out at the street and talking about everything under the sun. After years of ‘khaney kelyey kuch hai?’ being my first question when I came to hers – which was everyday. After years of knowing there was an extended closet in the next building with plenty of oufits and accessories for the borrowing: almost all of which fit me perfectly, though only a fraction would suit my tastes. Years of endless gossiping and giggling. Realizing that I have been at her house for over two hours and I had better go back home and then – since we hadn’t finished – taking her back to mine and spending another two hours doing NOTHING BUT TALKING. I don't even remember what it's liek to talk nonstop for four hours. Awful display of badminton skills downstairs. Midnight walks. Going to Lady Choice Lace Centre (LOL) for matching ‘bayl’ for our dupattas and suits. Agonizing when the tailor spoilt our suits and going for alterations. Who’s going to go with me to the tailor’s now?

Having her meant never having to ride the bus or go to tariq road alone. Never having a story to tell without having anyone to tell it to. It meant never having no shoulder to cry on. Never feeling like no one cared (aside from family cuz they just don’t count).

It meant French fries and badminton and a 200 rupee loan whenever I wanted.

It meant sharing everything from her huge collection of earrings to that little stub of Jordanna Nutmeg lip-pencil which was the best shade we ever found and never found again. We used it down to the last centimetre. My god, I think we injured our lips trying to get those last bits out.

I don’t know if we can every have any of it again. I think we lost it all five years ago when I moved here. I remember how hard it was to not be next door to her anymore. But I think it was easier for me to cope with it because I was in the new exciting place with lots of discoveries to make. She was the one stuck in the same schedule with her biggest co-conspirator not there anymore.

And now I’m the one in her shoes. She’s started out on a whole new phase of her life … with a whole new set of people and I’m the one who stood there underneath her building the day after her ‘rukhsati’, on my way to the airport. Knowing that she’s not up there to hug me good-bye, to ask me when I’m coming back. Knowing that the next time I come back here, I can’t run up to her flat before even going to mine and ring the doorbell and surprise her.

Knowing that it’s never, ever going to be just the two of us again: on that balcony, with our fries, talking about things that didn’t matter and yet, mattered more than anything else in the whole, wide world.