I cross the street when the little man and the swinging traffic light exchange colors to get to the Good Bar and it is a good bar because Nancy runs it. The guy in the dentist’s chair across from me doesn’t budge. He just sits there at the intersection, spilling out of his throne on wheels, looking at me and beyond me, the black trash bag tied to his chair flapping behind his head like a shredded pirate flag.

I hop and skip over rivulets of hot piss running down the footpath, sourced from a hidden corner. There’s a form under the cardboard boxes and newspapers stacked against the wall. I see a thick toenail rotting at the edges, sticking out of a hot pink sock. I breathe in deeply. It’s perverted to want to smell the sour urine, the curdling milky stench of puke, the decay of this human body. And yet I do.

The bar is covered in it’s usual set of bougie limbs, elbows teetering and arms resting on the marble surface clad in plaid, maori tattoos that are supposed to mean something,  smart wool or organic cotton. White fingers trace the cold sweat running down Moscow mule mugs, push and pull the delicate stems of wine glasses. The couple in the left corner is definitely on a first date, a Swipe Right, perhaps a Swipe Right for right now. Jane Doe is hanging on to every word Jon Doe is saying. Jon Doe is feeling like the king of the world because Jane Doe thinks he’s funny and he gets to be with the girl with the big bouncy tits.

Nancy comes by and gives me a hug. I don’t take it for granted that she knows my name, that she smiles in familiar recognition every time I walk in. We talk about my new job, a startup, I tell her. Bold move, she says. It doesn’t feel bold. I can still pay the bills. I can still come to the Good Bar and pay for my drink.

I slouch, bony shoulders up and over me like an angel’s wings, an olive colored resting bitch face plastered to keep strangers away. Yet here he is, bearded and hipstered, sitting beside me trying to connect. He orders bruschetta, the chunks of tomato swallowed by the hole in his wiry pubic face – all except one angry red sliver accompanied by crumbs – little snow flakes, two, three, four, five, stuck below his line of sight, waiting for baby birds to devour them.  He strikes up a conversation with the petite brunette in the corner, chest blown up like a hot air balloon, crowding her space with his form and his scent. I wonder how hard she’s trying to avoid the mocking tomato on his face.

It’s girls night out to my right – excessive wine and restrictive pushup bras create back fat spillage but satin blouses gloss over all imperfections, belly rolls and muffin tops disguised in elegance. Their Buzzfeed flavor of feminism is annoying. I judge them for the crackle and pop in their voices, the persistent need for validation that punctuates every comment. I know better but I’m too tired to be good tonight.

I sign my receipt and xoxo it for Nancy. She gives me leftover drip coffee from the next door cafe. I see Beard coming back from the shitter to his girl. The tomato is gone, as is his bravado. Mirror mirror on the wall, why are you smiling so?

Pioneer Square is washed in orange street lights with a quiet dark city of glass making room for what used to be. Yellow rain streaks my vision.  A lardy woman stands in the middle of the street, stained white tank top pulled over her large smiling face, her massive teet generously offered to the world for a satiating suckle. Fat Lady Soprano dances drunkenly  as she serenades the neighborhood.

I am mesmerized.

My foot catches in the gutter.

I trip.

I fall.

I laugh maniacally.

So does Fat Lady Soprano.

I offer her Nancy’s coffee. She chugs it.

On the other side of shame is freedom, I write in my journal that night.

Who planted the ancient Banyan tree that languished in the middle of the housing pavilion’s barren courtyard? Where did pruny old Zahara bibi come from? Questions none of the residents asked because both had been there for as long as anyone could remember.

Just as the sun rose and the rooster crowed each morning, Zahara’s contorted form hobbled across the courtyard to her makeshift stove under the tree. Her ossified bones cracked and complained at yet another day of hard labor in a long life of even harder labor as she pulled a pail of water from the well for the morning brew.

These young lazy wives with their fat good for nothing husbands and disobedient kids. All asleep. No one had any respect for the elderly, they just didn’t make them like they did in her youth, she thought as she stoked the fire.

As the smell of burning cow dung cakes wafted through half shut windows, the pavilion began to stir and awaken. Light burst into tiny dark rooms, piercing through tightly shut eyelids and the dreams that hid behind them.

They heard the old witch calling out, cussing them for letting the day go by, preaching the value of every passing moment.

“Get up you fools! The animals can’t tend to themselves, now can they?”

“Allah loves those who rise up to praise his glory just as the sun does– don’t you want the grace of Allah?”

She handed them hot tea in dented and discolored tin cups, and stuffed the sweaty crumpled Ruppee notes in her muslin money belt.

“Don’t you get any ideas, Ayesha, you pincher. Put that cup right back” she said, as Zahara’s eyes sought out Sanam Jaan’s face in the small cue next to her stove.

And there she was, holding on to the aerial roots of the Banyan, swaying in the morning breeze, honey almond eyes open to the world in hope and anticipation.

“Arms like sticks! You need to eat more”, Zahara bibi said as she skimmed cream from the milk pot and stirred it into Sanam’s cup.

Sanam smiled. “Shukriya Bibi Jaan”. A gracious thanks from a gracious child.

Zahara watched Sanam’s slender figure walk away towards the goat pen. She rushed a silent prayer to protect Sanam from the evil eye of others and blew it in her direction, hoping that the wind carried it all the way across the courtyard. God’s innocent children were the most susceptible to the sickness that lived within men’s hearts. A few minutes later, she prayed again because she could not be sure if she had forgotten. She did not trust her memory anymore and unrelenting routine smudged the lines between today and yesterday. 

Washing dishes by the well Zahara barely registered the girls teasing Sanam Jaan for being the only person the old hag favored. The tinkling sound of their laughter rang in her ears, her mind’s eye flooded with a vivid picture of a young woman in the barley field, with a pail of water on her head, saying something indistinguishable because she was too far away and it was too long ago, then laughing and looking away. 

A deep sigh. A whisper of want.

Come back daughter. My heart can no longer go on.

“Oye! Sanam Sanam Sanam”

The memory dissolved and Zahara bibi turned around at the sound of a deep resonant voice. Ali Reza strode quietly towards the girls, predatorily quiet, his body loose and relaxed after having a good laugh at a dirty joke with the other boys. He kept his face low, the char pools of his eyes hooded, a lurking smile, saved for that perfectly intimate moment just between the two of them in the midst of a buzzing crowd.

The girls chirped and giggled, even younger in their demeanor than their meager sixteen years. Sanam stood to the side, intent on plucking invisible strands of loose thread from the hem of her scarf.

“A pomegranate” he said, raising the polished red fruit to her face.

“To go with that scarf”

Not looking up, Sanam accepted the pomegranate and turned to leave.

“For my Sanam” she thought she heard him whisper as she walked away.

Zahara bibi looked on.

Son of a bandit, mischief maker, Satan’s worker. She would go and speak with the boy’s mother, she told herself as she scurried away in the blistering heat, a dust cloud at her dragging heels.

But she never did speak to Ali Reza’s mother. Instead Zahara bibi took it upon herself to nip this bud before it blossomed and ripened into rotting fruit. She brewed tea and plotted how best to warn Sanam against the evil nature of men.

“He gave Ghazal earrings” she blurted out as she poured Sanam’s tea one morning.

“Your Ali Reza Jaan tells all the girls how special they are. You are not the only one”

She was unprepared for the tears that flooded Sanam Jan’s eyes, no longer curious and open but veiled and unseeing of the good intentions behind Zahara bibi’s stern warning.

“I meant…don’t be fooled by boys. Their love is like the waxing and waning moon. Fleeting. Leaving you in darkness when it goes away.”

It didn’t seem to help.

Sanam turned and walked away, leaving Zahara bibi holding her tea and bread, calling out after her. Zahara knew that she had lied about Ali Reza. A necessary lie to protect Sanam jan at any cost.

That night, Zahara was grizzlier than usual. They sat next to her, the families that lived in the pavilion, chatting away, occasionally involving her in the conversation about when to start sowing the cotton plants for the season, whether to grow zucchinis or leave the eggplant vines that snaked around the compound. Little Ahmed ran off his with his sister’s plastic ball, her wails pushing their harried mother over the edge.

“I’ll leave you with Zahara bibi tonight! She eats children before the sun rises” she hissed at him as she yanked him to come crashing down in her scrawny lap.

Zahara did not care. She liked to be feared. She wished she could scare Ali Reza away. She waited for the Lord to show her a way, and finally it came in the way of Ghazal, the prettiest and most vane of girls in the pavilion. Much to Ghazal’s surprise, Zaraha offered to braid her long hair one morning. Zahara bibi had only ever had a mean word for Ghazal, scolding her for wearing clothes that showed off her vulgar breasts and suggestive buttocks, making eyes at the boys, laughing loudly so as to offend the angels, and talking back when she was clearly too young to know the ways of nature.

Ghazal sat on the ground, her head leveled with Zahara bibi’s knobby knees sticking out from the wobbly stool she sat on.

“You don’t use any coconut oil in your hair, do you? The luster of youth wears off, especially after you bear children”, Zahara bibi preached as she worked the tangles in Ghazal’s hair, ignoring her protests at the sharp tugs.

“Did I see you waving your braid at Ali Reza the other day?” she questioned, casually.

“Me?”

“No, your dead mother’s ghost”

“Why are you such an angry witch, Zahara bibi?”

Silence

“Why would I wave my braid and makes eyes at Ali Reza! He can’t put one foot in front of the other, so drunk on love”

“With?”

“I don’t know. Why do you care?”

Zahara’s tone shifted.

“I don’t. I was merely asking you about him because I wanted to send this bottle of ground turmeric to his mother and she said to give it to him. She’s making Biryani I think. My old bones can barely get me from my bed to this tree and back. Can you go over and give it to him?”

What are you up to old lady, Ghazal’s sharp skeptical eyes tried to look past Zahara bibi’s eyes and into her mind. Oh never mind, it was a chance to go and talk to the boys in the field. She nodded, whipped her snake of a braid to one side, grabbed the turmeric and headed over to the fields behind the pavilion.

Zahara waited for Ghazal to disappear around the corner, then walked faster than she had in thirty years, adrenalin masking all pain and mobilizing every part of her. She found Sanam in the goat pen.

“Sanam Jan “ and took a shallow breath

“Ah yes Sanam jan” and another shallow breath

“Here you are”

“Zahara bibi! Is everything ok?” Sanam moved forward, reaching out for a profusely sweating Zahara.

“Oh yes” and a deeper breath

“Why wouldn’t it be! I just need to you to go and see if the boys will be coming back for lunch so I can plan how much lentil to put on boil”

Strange, Sanam thought. Zahara bibi had never been this precise in how much food to prepare. The boys had always wondered if she purposefully made less to watch them suffer or because her heart had turned miserly because she had grown up hungry.

“Of course. Let me get you a glass of water and then I’ll go and ask”

“No! I’m fine. I’m in a rush. You must go now”

Zahara sat outside the goat pen, knotted hands shredding the blade of hay into littler and littler pieces. God willing, Sanam jan would see Ali Reza with Ghazal and know the truth of Ali Reza’s nature, the truth she had worked so hard to orchestrate and expose.

She waited for a long time.  Or perhaps it seemed long. She didn’t trust her sense of passage of time anymore, minutes could feel like hours and hours like minutes.

Sanam jan was walking towards her, much like her own daughter had done thousands of time, coming home from school, coming back from the fields, face still too far away to clearly see, slight figure frail against the arid brown backdrop. 

“Kiran jan?”

“Zahara bibi, it’s me. Sanam. Are you alright?”

“Sanam. Sanam Jan. Yes. Why wouldn’t I be alright? Did you find out?”, she said as she stepped into the present, offended at the interruption, longing to have seen her Kiran’s face a little closer.

Had Sanam’s kajol run just a little? Was the tip of her nose red? Zahara bibi furrowed her brow in concentration as she tried to spot signs of heart break in Sanam’s smooth olive face. She couldn’t be sure but she could hope and remain vigilant.

That night when the meal was done, and tired mothers carried their sleeping toddlers to their tiny cots in their little nooks, Zahara stayed behind, laying her prayer mat under the canopy of leaves. The air was dead, the Banyan stood still, an impregnable form against a veiled, brooding sky. A storm was coming and all of nature’s creatures held their breath in trepidation and awe. Zahara whispered late into the night, praying to her Lord, looking up towards Him.

Stooped in prayer, her head resting on the mat, the whispers grew softer, the pauses between the words longer. Images from the day shifted, making room for the barley fields of long ago, still shifting woefully in the summer heat. She loved to watch her Kiran come home, teetering and tottering on the narrow farmers path, now two heads taller than the long grass. She sat down and gently rubbed her mother’s coarse feet as she did every day, picking at the cracks and dead skin idly. Hesitantly, she brought up Abdullah, the man who had bought her shaved ice in the bazaar and stolen her heart. He was a good man, she said, and he loved her. They wanted to get married. He was older, had another wife, but he had promised her a better life. Zahara took her feet away from her daughter and turned away. She kept the door locked when Abdullah, that stray dog that had followed her Kiran home came to see her, she pretended not to hear those words now etched in her memory “I married your girl. She’s mine now”. She kept her back towards Kiran as she took her last steps out of their nest. The earth tilted, seasons shifted, Zahara lived from one prayer to the next, the Lord ever present with her. She heard about the birth of her granddaughter from the women who sat by the well, waiting for their turn. She continued to fill her pails.

Then the news came. A stove. A fire. A dead girl. A dead child. An accident they said.

Zahara bibi ran, walked, ran, stumbled, the earth to give way to lead her to Abdullah’s house. He turned away, the murderer. His mother, vulture, squawked

“Delicate flower, your Kiran, always complaining. No good in the fields or the house anyway”

Rage, rage, unleash the hate, chew her heart out and spit it in the fire, silence that mouth, that beating in her rib cage. Cut off his dick and parade him in the town, she clawed at his face, pulled his hair, kicked his shins.

“Throw her out where we threw out her whore daughter” the vulture said.

Two unmarked graves, bare and flowerless, one only a little longer than the other, hidden and disgraced under the tree outside their house, her Kiran’s prison.  Zahara stroked the gentle swell of dried earth that now cradled her child, dark brown spots forming on it as the tears fell.

She had named her daughter Kiran, a ray of sunshine. The tamed fire of a stove could not consume the brilliance of the sun. It just couldn’t. She would wake up and find the barley fields again.

It was dark now, still except for the waves of void that crashed against her suddenly old and tired body, quiet except for the sound of her reluctant breath. Was that a whisper she heard? Two voices, she could barely discern. And then a giggle.

Zahara could feel the jute prayer mat branded on her forehead as she rose. The air had begun to stir, carrying wisps of secrets – let’s elope, let’s get married and come back. Sanam jan and Ali Reza were on the other side of the Banyan’s sprawling trunk, partly revealed, partly veiled by its long dangling arms, wind wailing through its leaves. Rage, fear filled Zahara bibi’s limbs, turgid, ready to shield, protect, lash out.

Step out? Tell them to stop?

Cry out and wake up the pavilion?

Be a coward? Remain silent?

Thoughts fought, battling for the reins while Zahara bibi stood paralyzed listening to the young lovers plan their youthful escape.

Let this story be a happy one, she heard a small whisper, now getting louder, the calming ring of a wind chime among the shrill panic of the other voices.

Let me go.

The other voices grew louder, burying the whisper, now faint, now rising.

Let them be.

The lovers took a step towards the path that leads them far away.

I picture the faces of all the kids that I know personally. Children of family members and friends. Leo Jan, Zaynab, Kai, Zoha, Leena, Connor, Malia, Avery, Owen, Kate, Ola, Jack, Eric, Amaan, Marwa, Hadi, Shahram…..I can count around 30.

I imagine them playing at the park, cheeks flushed with exertion and joy, little hands sticky with cotton candy and juice, grass stains on their knees from running after each other, falling down and getting right back up again.

The sun is setting. Soon it will be time to go home, clean up and get ready for bedtime.

I imagine a  thunderous sound, a wave of raging energy, knocking them down, tearing them apart. No bedtime, no laughter. Nothing. Except a ringing in my ears that won’t go away.

I brush my teeth, I go to bed, I wake up, I go to work, I smile, I nod. I get through the day. The darkness that’s been vignetting my view is starting to creep in.

The kids are gone.

There’s blood on the grass in the park and that’s all that remains of them.

My community is gone.

Drowned in sorrow. Swallowed whole by rage. Unable to remain standing in the face of such violence, incapable of healing such deep damage. The love among those left behind is unable to withstand the profound lack of hope and sadness that’s been thrust into our lives.

The 30 kids that died in the Lahore bombing this week were not the children of my family or friends. I did not know their names. I did not help them learn how to walk. I did not do cartwheels with them at the park. But they were someone’s little ones, someone’s most precious love.

It fills my heart with black, malevolent anger to think of the people that sat in the parking lot right next to the children’s swings, biding their time to explode. I’m mad! RAGING FUCKING MAD! I feel no empathy. I want these fuckers to feel the pain that they’ve caused. I want to be the one that makes them feel it.

I see my rage mirrored among Pakistani friends on Facebook and Whatsapp as they debate, blame and shame each other. Who is responsible! The army? The government? The Americans? The Taliban? The West, that doesn’t give a fuck and is trying to turn this into a “Pakistani Muslim kills Christians” story? France for not turning the Eiffel Tower into Pakistani colors in support of this tragedy? Someone! Anyone! Our rage needs a target. Any target.

I remember the Pakistan I grew up in. It was tolerant. My parents would go for dinner, dancing and the movies. Boys and girls played together in the streets. TV shows celebrated young love without feeling the need to make it dirty. Kites soared high on basant, wedding parties ran long into the night, the middle class of Pakistan was thriving. There were norms and ritual but there was little persecution for not following them. People respected decorum and values.

I also remember it all change. It wasn’t overnight but it was palpable even as it took hold. The radicalization of Pakistan was a well funded cold war-era campaign. Religious schools with extreme messages popping up, radical mosques on every corner, ultimate government control of social media and news. Mind wash and systematic desensitization of the population to messages of pure hate. Zero investment in education or welfare of ordinary citizens because the 2-family political parties take turns fucking the country over. Combine this with the feeding frenzy that foreign defense money has created. It has evaporated the middle class and put in it’s place a cannibalistic system that rewards blind looting of itself over the principle of contributing and creating value in the world. Finally, layer on top of this, meddlesome neighbors because Pakistan is one strategic piece of real estate, caught between the titans. What you get is One Big Cluster-Fuck.

And then I hear Mr. Trump. How he rouses sentiments of hate under the banner of making us GREAT again. How he gives people permission to be their ugliest selves and feel good and righteous about it.

All of us have infinite darkness within us that has the ability to swallow the entire world. If you’re sitting here thinking you don’t have it in you to be a bomber just like the asshole in Lahore, you don’t know the perversion of your own reptile brain. You have not named him or claimed him yet. In the moment I heard about the bombing, the moment I envisioned those children being blown to bits, I briefly saw the ugliest part of me. The part that knows no reason. The part that’s incapable of empathy. The part that demands revenge and destruction. The part that’s looking for a target. Any target.

As much as I would love to have a solution to it all – something elegant and simple, like the singularly true answer to a puzzle – I have nothing to offer except a pure stream of consciousness.