My Life In…

Peshawar

By Ernest Dempsey

About six years ago when I left Peshawar, my city of graduation, I went easy on showing sentiment by reminding myself about its smoky and crowded environment. The feeling was ‘Ah! At last I can go back home and stay off the clamor.’ There were other reasons for my disposition to leave the city soon as possible. I was suffering from Herpes zoster (shingles), restlessness, eternal disturbance by crowding of my room with my friends, and those of my brother too, and lack of time to pursue writing. Yes, I could not live without writing at least a few lines daily in a neglected corner. Having said this, I remember my sigh of relief when my final viva voce exam for graduation was over and I stepped out of my alma mater with a travel bag on my back and the mental picture of a wide, verdant field in my hometown with me writing under the peaceful shade of a tree.

It would be great if things always turned out the way we anticipated them. More often, they don’t. Being a graduate now, I was supposed to earn my pocket money. Thanks to the traditional family system, an employed young man was always welcome to have his share of the bread at his parent’s. In less than a month, however, I realized that I had to give more of my time to all my family and relatives than I was willing to give my friends and non-writing busyness at the university. Helping with house chores, coping with people’s questions about my prospective career, and trying to forget about the stinky dump that was my immediate neighbor, all these dragged me right in front of the ugliness of life. The beauty lay in the cool summer evenings when I would sit by my younger brother Shais’s side and indulge in the gossip that characterized our long friendship since childhood. Shais was the primary happiness in my life; the only substitute for writing. In fact, my writing started as his substitute years back when he started to have other friends and activities besides me. I thought I could swap the two best parts of my life for the greatest joy.

Four years in future. I am now the same introvert guy after leaving a few jobs without heeding my family’s concern. I am tutoring kids to keep my pocket running; providing emotional support to two women, my aunt and grandmother who are suffering from anxiety and depression; submitting my stories and poems to online magazines via the internet; and constantly thinking of getting out of Hangu (my hometown) and making my way back to Peshawar. But I feel tied up. I can’t go to Peshawar without taking a job and jobs in Peshawar are rare business. The luring scene of my life in Peshawar is that of the Central Library of Peshawar University and the green grounds and lawns where I loitered in the evening with a choice book in my hands. I am waiting for an opportunity to return to my alma mater as an employee who spends the day with uninteresting, or alienating office duties and refreshes his spirits with creative writing and reading in the evening. How aspirations change!

One year and a half in future. I have been appointed as a research associate at my institute of graduation. The bottled tension is released. I am free of the onus my family had on me for nearly five years, and I have a job in a city and institution where only a lucky person is thought to be employed. So am I lucky? I look around myself and see that I was wrong in calling Peshawar smoky and crowded in my graduation days. The smoke and crowd that blanket the city now is ten times greater than it was five years ago. You cannot cross the university road until some unseen angel provides a gap in the incessant traffic on both sides of the road. At 7 to 8 in the morning, it is nearly impossible to cross the road. In fact, you have to be very careful and vigilant while walking on the same side of the road or you are likely to bump into someone. Rickshaws and bicycles are not only a threat to your hearing but also to the whole of you. The same picture holds for 2 to 3 pm when schools and offices end. One alternative is to take an omnibus to the university and back to my residing place, a private hostel that is a little over a mile from my office. But then how will I find a vacant seat in it? During the rush hours, it’s hard even to find a place to stand in it.

In the hostel, I live in a small room while I pay the rent of two tenants to keep my privacy and personal space intact. For the first two months, things went well. I found time to write several short stories that would later become my humor book called The Biting Age. There wasn’t much disturbance. But now it’s a different picture. Young undergraduate students have occupied the side rooms and they take turns in playing loud music over their computers such that the uproar never ceases. The hostel has got the facility of cable television; another threat to peace. My side roommates ask me how I can study so long. I answer with the question, “How can you guys listen to music for so long?” Unfortunately, they take it for a compliment. I miss my university hostel during my final year of graduation. It was fairly peaceful and the night time was fun when I would play chess with my friends. By good chance, my new side roommate Sameer knows how to play chess. He has played it with his uncle in his school days. I ask him to play chess with me and he comes in the night for an hour or so. An ulterior motive of playing chess with him is of course stopping him from making uproar on his computer. It’s April and the heat is building up, so I am thinking of leaving this stuffy room, especially when the noise is not going to stop.

One month in the future. I have relocated my residence to a private hostel in a small colony at the rear side of the University. It is a quite place, though my side room has some young music-maniacs who get excited daily at night. So I ask the warden to keep a check on them. It helps and they get better in a week. But then I feel emptiness inside me. Maybe I have grown too much used to living in noise. It feels so unnatural to be living amongst young people who do not make noise because they do not read or write. If you stop them from making noise, they are little better than dead. There is some peace settling in inside me. I can read, write, and review books I get from America. I have even started interviewing American authors over the Internet. But the greater degree of peaceful silence in the university is countered by another observation; the number of students. When I left this institute, I remember it was not an overcrowded place. But now, when I go out to a canteen or mess, I find it hard to get room for sitting and dining. “What’s the matter? I ask my colleagues. They smile and tell me that in the past few years, the university admitted nearly double the number of students it normally admits. The additional admissions were for students who self-financed their studies. So for the sake of greater profit, many students were allowed to come and study while the administration did not tend to the arrangement of accommodation for them. The result was congestion in hostels and eating places. I sigh at the situation.

One year in future brings us to the present. I have turned down a PhD scholarship awarded by the government because I felt the terms tend to usurp my existential freedom. But no regrets linger as I am the author of The Biting Age, published in New York. With other publishing successes, I am awaiting the completion and publication of my first novel; my dream book. My hostel room has been shifted recently and the side roommates are again uncaring, uncivilized young guys who know nothing to enjoy but music. I often wonder why the music has to be loud. Maybe they all need to catch attention and the only bait they have is music. I am thinking of moving out. The only solution seems a peaceful place inhabited by families rather than young guys. In our Pakhtoon society, playing loud music is not encouraged in families.

The problem here is my bachelorhood. Yes, it is another dilemma in Peshawar to find an apartment to live if you are a bachelor. Pakhtoon families are very reluctant to let any single young man live near them. Single guys are thought of as seductive threats to the girls or women in the family. Recently, dozens of people raised a protest against all the hostels for guys in Shaheen Town, where I formerly lived. The matter was somehow settled by providing reassurances by the owners of those private hostels. I think PR works well here, so I’ve asked one of our peons, Naeem, to find me an apartment somewhere in Shaheen Town. He hopes he’ll find one soon for me. Now I am hopeful of getting a peaceful place in the noisy city of Peshawar, where I graduated, earned my own bread, maintained my independence, and where I loved someone. Somehow I have managed to see the invisible beautiful side of this seemingly ugly city.

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