Here I am, in Lahore. Just before I left the startling news arrived that the seller had accepted the offer (we had assumed he would want to bargain). So I left the house for the last time. It was not the house I grew up in, nor was I born there (as the GF was, in smaller room on the first floor), but it had become familiar. Frustrating too, but very familiar, and the GF loves it very much. So, sad. But also very exciting and it was pleasing to see that the excitement was the greater emotion for both the GF and his mother, at least for now.
The flight was surprisingly comfortable, despite being PIA. The food, for one, has improved dramatically in the last couple of years, and everything was on time – I daresay they were fed up of EU fines (sigh, EU). Then I arrived and the air was cloudy yellow, like diseased urine, even inside baggage claim, and it smelt of burning rubber. Outside it was fairly warm, and the entire entrance to the airport was dug up. As we drove back to the house, I could taste the bitterness of the air and my eyes stung. The skies were full of crows and kites, no smaller birds seemed to live. This is a great change – when I was a child there were one or two places in the city where one could readily see kites, mostly along the canal where there was a custom of feeding them flesh as thanks for good fortune. They were rare to see then, now they rule the skies. And the buildings were all grimy, covered in a grey oilish slick, the trees of my youth were all gone, as were the graceful houses and modest shopping areas. Now the houses were small and without gardens, the shopping malls immense and plastered with grey-streaked advertising.
I find it harder and harder to return to Lahore. It used to be a beautiful, graceful city. It started changing when I was in my teens, but even though I lived through much of the change, it seems to become harder to come back to it.
It’s all of a package with living away, I suppose. I am no longer an integral part of the family, nor do I share a lifestyle and values. I feel older, poorer and uglier, and more naive, when I am here.
It was good to see my family and the reunion started off in style as I found myself shouting an explanation of genital herpes to my deaf grandmother who couldn’t understand why people commonly refer to herpes as shingles these days.