Free Tunnel Vision by Shandana Minhas Page B

campaign?
    I ’ d always loved the rationale behind the campaign, in which the decimated hulks of cars totalled due to rash driving were displayed at roundabouts around the city. It was so reflective of our attitude to mistakes, from big ones to the slightest ones. Mess up and the only function left you is to be a lesson to others. And as an avid student of destruction, like any modern urbanite, I loved the wrecks themselves. The structural damage done to the cars and occasional bikes they chose was immense, guaranteed to immediately inspire the question of, ‘ would anyone survive that? ’
    My car could be a candidate, I reflected. It could be up there with all the other mangled and twisted metal. I was really quite excited about my potential brush with fame.
    I decided I liked thinking about fame and victory and destruction better than I liked thinking about my accident or my father. Or Saad. Actually, I wasn ’ t sure I wanted to be thinking at all. Maybe praying would be a better idea.When had I last prayed? I looked to the single spire rising from FTC ’ s domed mosque for inspiration, but all I drew from it was fodder for my patriarchal architecture theory. Do Talwar.Teen Talwar. Tower. Phallic symbols enshrined as public monuments, concrete and metal testimonials to the quest for a permanent erection so many of our men seemed sworn to. If I did pray after all, I was going to pray for an end to this worship of trivial male ideals.
    Who was I kidding? Dying would be the only way I could conceivably escape from the reality of being a woman here.We did most of the work at home, excelled at whatever professions we entered, consistently outperformed men in most academic fields where we were ‘ allowed ’ participation, yet my gender was as casually dismissed as a servant after a massage.
    The irony was, I had never been closer to the local female ideal as I was now. In a coma, reduced to the sum of my biological functions, with none of the inconvenient audible interference of the brain or the ego, I was THE perfect woman. Pretty. Pliant. Docile. Accepting. If I could figure out a way to occasionally move my limbs and crack a grimace of a smile they ’ re be a line of men stretching around the block eager to marry me.
    Why did every avenue of thought I explored end in a morass of negativity? I wondered what had happened to the burn victim. Her husband had probably set her on fire, with the help of his mother. One held her down as the other poured, watched side by side as she burned. Dangerous people, these mummy ’ s boys. And of course, these mummys. Insane, almost. Or in my case, really. But I didn ’ t want to think about my mother ’ s mental health or lack thereof at that point.
    The ambulance moved forward, or rather inched forward. Traffic on Karachi ’ s busiest thoroughfares was heavy at all times except late night or iftar time in Ramadan, and we seemed to have hit rush hour. The siren wailed above us, and I wished again the driver would turn it off. What if someone got irritated and decided to set fire to the ambulance? Like the time during the last anti-war protest when the crowd got particularly feisty and set fire to ambulances and then pelted the incoming fire trucks with stones? We didn ’ t have the courage to pelt the motorcades that condemned us to wilting in the hot summer sun, but we had no issues picking on the people who were trying to help us. It was the lead in the air, I decided, and in the water. It had made us all crazy. Crazy.
    I chose to ignore the fact that Ammi appeared to have been certifiably insane way before she imbibed enough Karachi water or breathed enough of its air for the city to accept the blame like the passive whore that it was.
    Did I already mention that I ’ ve never met a whore?

ALLAH AAP KI JORI SALAMAT RAKHAY
    POPULAR BEGGAR LINE
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    E very Saturday my mother did the rounds of graveyards. Since the early nineties, she