A Heatwave for the Homesick

The curse of not living in Pakistan is that you forget the smallest, most trivial of details about the life you once lived. You forget the perpetual dust, construction noise, the constant feeling that the earth could swallow you whole (open manholes) or the sky could consume you (building collapse, torrential rain, billboard falling on your head—take your pick!). You forget what sarcasm is like; I live in a city in the Netherlands where people are very direct, but jokes fall flatter than the Dutch terrain. You start to feel like you’re a very, very bad standup comic. You start to get a little weepy at the sight of chilli garlic sauce in your local desi grocery, or when a friend gives you her last packet of Nimco Slims. However, I have not forgotten that I still have a Pakistani passport; I refuse to use the word expat for myself, at least not until I get a NICOP and start acting confused at the airport when the ‘ladies line’ is 100% men, in the manner of similarly amnesia-inflicted expats.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem—the ability to forget, to only miss kebab rolls—except I am meant to be writing about Pakistan. Even sniffing tar while crossing roadworks has not helped evoke home, and a deadline is bearing down on me. But then a heatwave hit Europe this month. I thought I would be fine, I am after all a hardened Karachi person. But I screamed as I put my bare feet on my terrace. There I was, home again. Scalded soles, hopping about to find a pair of chappals.

As it hit 35 degrees—I am aware I am not deserving of sympathy for this—I found myself returning to how summer feels: the inability to work, brain a perpetual muddle, the exhaustion of trying to lug groceries home, the desire to stop every few minutes to drink water, the perfect summer cocktail that is orange-flavoured ORS. The way the sun tans you unevenly: the dreaded half-sleeve line, reminiscent of school uniforms and t-shirts, feet a different colour than your shins. The ice in the freezer is always translucent. The open windows let in too much dust, flies, and insects your Karachi-self has only ever read about in a book. The fan is too loud, too slow, too noisy. You are too loud, too slow, too noisy.

While summer feels like it should seep you of the desire to live, it is indisputably the most creative time of the year. Forget about writing in the cold grey of winter, swaddled in sweaters and shawls, trying not to die of the toxic smog, to find the will to move away from the heater. Why should one write during moonghpali season anyway? Apparently what I need to write about Pakistan is to be on the edge of dehydration and desperation, when it is easy to chalk up my irritability and inability to be creative to the weather, KE and WAPDA (add your choice of villain here). But also when I can make my version of my ancestors’ bachpan main hum footpath pe lamppost ki roshni se parhte they story with a Miniso fan and the Notes app.

Occasionally, I tell people who mistakenly ask me for writing advice to “read more! read everything!” It appears that what I should be telling them is to become their most slovenly selves, to sit on the terrace for an hour until they have tanned one arm unevenly and also become a little manic. After all, summer is the only time that one can be in the rattiest of clothes until 1 pm, when one can let go of a hair routine (blasting hot air at your hair is an unthinkable prospect), when PJs are acceptable (too humid for real clothes), when there is no point to ironing anything. It is the only time when words flow out of me, when I can conjure heartsickness and humidity, when my feet feel like they are aflame and could only be cooled by the pipe dream of owning a kiddie pool filled with ice. Then, I am mentally home. I can write again: my characters are stuck in traffic, being hurled in and out of buses, wondering if they’ll ever get home.

I realise that I have always done my best work in the summer: fieldwork in over 40 degrees Celsius, coming up with story angles while wondering if I’m about to pass out from the heat, meeting deadlines on the hottest day of the year, resentful that everyone else is out having fun. The last time I wrote just as easily was on a short holiday I took to the south of France, hoping to get my one vacation of the year during the off-season and to “get a break” or whatever it is writers say they need while they are destroying their bank account. (Again, I am aware I am not winning any sympathy points here). I did need a break, but it turned out that what I needed to write was warmth: people watching while eating snacks in an alley because it was too hot for proper meals, taking a breather in the quiet of a church and wondering if confession covers writer’s block, getting a place to sit on the beach promenade, finding stores closed for siesta, my bag stuffed with the jacket I had to remove within five minutes of walking to the bus stop. I walked too much one day and felt so addled by the heat that I had to go back to my hotel, lie down, open all the windows, long for air-conditioning, my brain wiped of any thoughts until the evening when I could open my laptop and somehow found it easy enough to work again. One afternoon, I filmed the roar of the ocean; unlike any other video I have on my phone, I go back to it often.

I’m not going on vacation this summer, so instead I make do on my terrace (with slippers). I make playlists of songs that remind me of being driftless; I have a writing breakthrough while listening to Atif Aslam. Perhaps one can find bits of home anywhere there is summer, in the noise of children demanding gelato; in the surliness of a French cafe owner, so Karachi-like in his dismissiveness that it leaves one a little defensive, a little resentful, and mostly, a little bit like you’re home. Now, if only it would stop raining so I could go back to writing.