The air was thick with many mingled aromas of spices, sweat, and coal. Anwar sat slouched on a plastic grey chair in one secluded corner of ‘Babur frash tea home.’ He glanced at the clock that hung all alone on the white painted wall. It was 10.45 p.m. His two other friends would be coming here very soon, in another fifteen minutes or so. He stared absentmindedly at his wrinkled palms, which bore deep, dry cracks, reciprocating the fragmented life he was leading himself.

His mind wandered and he landed in a memory made a few hours back, right in the middle of the quiet chaos of what he called his home. He sat on his rickety rocking chair while his daughter in law was busy scrubbing the kitchen floor, which was so deeply embedded in soot that it seemed futile to even try. She was drenched in sweat by the time she came out and her green qameez stuck to her plump body like a second skin.

“Aba jee, don’t you have plans with your friends?” she questioned flustered with the sweat that trickled down her forehead into her big fiery eyes.

“Beta, my knees aren’t allowing me to walk, I might skip tonight’s meeting,” he replied in his raspy voice that was deeply punctuated with his pain. The fact of the matter was that when Anwar, was 34, a fairly young lad, his wife, Sugrah, passed away due to bone cancer. His son, Rabu, was still only seven then, and was unqualified and unaware of the significant changes that were going to follow in his life.

Anwar was never a rich or a middleclass man, he was living hand-to-mouth since the longest of times. Even after the death of his parents, which was two years after he got married to Sugrah, he did not earn enough money that could be accounted as his savings. So in actuality it didn’t change much, the money he used to allot to his parents slot was now given to his wife and child.

“Aba jee, today some people are coming from the neighbouring village, some big shot building makers. They said that they wanted to buy our house and build a road through it. I think it’s a great idea, that’s why I called them to tea,” she announced loudly and slowly for my benefit while she wiped her soot and sweat ridden forehead with her crumpled dirty duppatta.

Anwar froze. Unconsciously tears stung at his eyes and he had the strong urge to rub them but he managed to keep his hands tightly knotted together. There was complete silence in the room, the tension so colossal that if it was money, it could make anybody millionaires.

“Beta, this just isn’t a house, its my life, my struggle, my companion, my everything. I’ve grown up in it, rebuilt it when it broke down due to the storms. I have sweated for this house, sometimes bled too. I don’t want to sell it, or even if I do, I don’t want it broken down to rubble,” he whispered loudly which seemed like a wail owing to the fact that the room was extremely quiet.

“Aba, Rabu has earned an equal position in this house, after all the house is under his name, so I don’t think I was asking for permission or suggestions. We’re past all of that. We’ve made up our minds and sadly you have no say in it,” she replied so slow that I could read every syllable that her mouth formed, voice, while the heat of the merciless July sun burned and dried Anwar’s tears. Almost melting them away, with his ego.

“This is my house Tasneem,” he said in a loud voice, which was oozing with venom.

“No, you lost this house the minute you assigned its ownership to Rabu,” she replied back maliciously, her face had contorted into a evil frown.

A gentle nudge on his shoulder brought him back to reality. He checked the clock, it was 11.00 p.m.

Yasir gave his best friend a big smile and thought in his heart ‘Trouble at home,’ he sat down in an identical grey plastic chair adjacent to Anwar’s and loudly tapped on the table, Anwar looked at him and shook his head.

“Don’t order anything. Not yet Yasir, Bhakhtiar still has to come,” said Anwar almost wincing with the pain in his knees.

Yasir, nodded his head and sat back in his seat. He knew that Anwar was deeply troubled but then again who wasn’t. His mind scudded from the chipped of paint on the wall, to the bubbling oil in the wide mouthed pan which sat on top of the bellowing fire. Babur the tea homeowner sat next to his drawer, counting a thick stack of rupee notes under his table while he twisted and turned his long bushy moustaches time to time.

There was a long comfortable silence between them and Yasir without realizing drifted off to older times. He landed inside an ancient memory where he sat under his favourite mango tree, his head resting against its bark. His eyes were heavy and he still vividly remembered how sleepy he was.

“Are you sleeping?” asked a female voice. He opened one of his eyes to glare at the intruder but the moment he opened them up he was stunned to a silence. He stared at the woman who was clad in a black long burkha, and she was perhaps the most revolting site that he has ever witnessed. Her hair clung together in several places owning to the fact that they hadn’t been washed for the longest. He couldn’t really determine her age because the sheer ugliness in her baffled him.

Her face was the colour of rotten bananas, pale brown with black patches. She smiled at him and his heart leapt in his stomach, she had only two teeth, which were as black as her burkha. She sat next to him and Yasir realized that she smelled no different than the way she looked. She smelled like a rotten banana.

“I’m the protector of this tree and I don’t appreciate people sleeping under its shade without my permission,” she said in an echoing voice.

Yasir only gulped loudly he was only seventeen then.
“I’m afraid you”ll have to give me something for the disrespect that you have caused to me and my tree,” she uttered in a matter of fact way.

He didn’t remember how or when but the next thing he remembered was the blister ridden hands of that woman that engulfed his throat like the way water engulfs you whole not leaving a single inch of your body untouched.

“Please…I’m sorr…” and his voice had trailed off just like his consciousness. The last thing he remembered were the black, black eyes of that woman. He had never seen such intense eyes and it had seemed that her pupils kept dilating and contracting within seconds identical to his breathing.

He jolted back to reality in a matter of a few seconds. Bhaktiar’s walking stick had jammed into his chair. He stared meekly at him, while his sweat mingled with a few idle tears on his face.

Anwar got up and directed Bhakhtiar to another plastic chair, the only one that was red.

“Rough day,” he uttered which was more of a comment than a question. The seats of the teahouse were getting consumed now. Yasir stared at the clock on the wall, which showed him that it was only 11.10. Ten minutes had elapsed and he had managed to travel back to his past and future unscathed.

Bhakhtiar was wearing a starched white shalwar qameez; he was always impeccably dressed. Yasir nervously rapped on the off-white table that used to be white at one point. Ditta, a young boy, 13 years of age, strolled towards them.

“Tea and pakoras as usual, Saab Jee?” he questioned him and Yasir nodded. The boy sauntered back announcing the new order to Babur who was now done counting his money. Yasir saw Babur take out the batter from the shelf under the steaming pan, which was covered, in a damp blue cloth with a number of flies hovering over it. He plunged his hands inside the batter and after holding a sizable amount dipped it into the searing pan. The pakora’s cackled to life.

“I went to the station again today,” muttered Bhakhtiar. He was the oldest among them. He was 67 while Anwar was 65 and Yasir was 63. Both of his friends looked at him expectantly waiting for him to continue.

“I received another letter instead of his visit, I don’t think I will be able to handle this anymore. It’s been fifteen years,” he said in a defeated voice.

Bhakhtiar unlike the other two had a comparatively happier life. He got married at 27 had his first and last child when he was 28. He worked at a stable job, a soap factory. Ditta came back juggling two trays that carried steaming cups of tea and pakoras. The three of them watched him set the table with ravenous eyes and dug into the food as soon as Ditta turned to go back. While each one was lost in his own thought, Bhakhtiar sat uncomfortably straight staring blindly at nothing. He still remembered how with every passing day he had saved enough money to teach his son, Wahab, at a good school. He worked long shifts, overtime, so that he could manage both his house and son’s education simultaneously.

What he was unaware and unprepared for was how different worlds collide almost crashing against each other without ever becoming one. Wahab was an ace student, topped all of his classes with flying marks. He made Bhakhtiar and his wife so proud. They were called the star family in the entire community. They were still called that, except that the star in Bhaktiar’s life no longer existed.

“Baba, I have decided to go to Lahore and study there,” said Wahab one day, a long time back.

Bhakhtiar laughed and said “And bacha once you go there you get me a English speaking mem sahib your mother is getting old.”

“I’m not joking Aba, I haven’t told you but I have been saving my pocket money. And besides you know that I have enough money since I’ve been working for Chaudry Salamat Ullah, he pays me ample for checking and maintaining his accounts,” he uttered nonchalantly.

Bhakhtiar had sat up then recognizing the seriousness in his boy’s voice. “But beta, you know your mother is getting old, and also that her health is deteriorating. I don’t think she’ll be very happy with your decision. I’m not!” he exclaimed his anger pulsed in his veins.

“Baba, I have made up my mind and besides, I will always visit in the holidays,” he uttered in his defense.

“This isn’t happening, you’re not going, and this is the end of this conversation,” he snapped back and clutched his walking stick, not wanting to let go.

The discussion had ended then but what followed was pretty much unexpected. Wahab left the house, taking away a few clothes and some other belongings. What he left behind was a letter.

Dearest Aba Ama,I know you people might be disappointed in what I have done but I no longer see any point in jeopardizing my career over something so insignificant. This town is full of people who haven’t achieved anything all their life, and I don’t want to be another one of them. I have dreams, big ones, and none of them include Chaudry Salamat Ullah’s accounts or worthless factories.

Bhakhtiar still remembered how terribly weak he felt at that moment in his life when his wife had read out the letter for him. She took her time reading and rereading it on her own several times before she read it out to him. He remembered that he had never felt so sightless as he did at that point. He could actually feel his heart breaking and it was a feeling he never wanted to have again. Bhakhtiar and his wife and both cried themselves to sleep that night and many other nights following that one until after two weeks, his wife Fakhra, passed away quietly in his arms.

Anwar snapped his fingers in front of Bhakhtiar to catch his attention. For a moment he had forgotten, he smiled sadly and touched Bhaktiar’s hands, which were gripping the head of his walking stick very tightly.

The pakora’s had finished but the life outside the circle of the three of them was still thriving like a mad circus. The world shone in all its brightness, the colours vividly smudged and embossed in the their minds suffused with unconditional sadness and hopes for a better time.

Their small village, Sher Gadh twinkled and urged them to join in and forget their worries, which enveloped their lives but life, isn’t as simple as that. The mere fact that all of them had the motivation to join each other everyday at this small place was a testimony to their will to not succumb to their failures.

After all Anwar, the deaf one, Yasir the mute one, and Bhakhtiar the blind one were the winners amongst the throng of the world that claimed to be perfect.