They talk about the air a lot, actually. The usual videos pointing out emergency exits and those fun water slides that one never gets to use now also have detailed descriptions of how air filtration on flights works, how it’s actually the safest mode of air filtration currently in existence and how your own bubble of air is replaced by a fresh non-toxic breeze every two minutes. That the announcement repeated every few hours likely means that I was not the only OCD newly-minted germaphobe on the plane.
I gripped these assurances tight to my chest like a comforting toy as I tried to sleep, acutely aware of every sniffle and cough in the artificial darkness of the flight despite the fistful of sleeping pills I’d taken. At a certain point, my stewardess reminded me after I asked for my fifth set of sanitized napkins, you just have to trust that everything will be OK.
I’ve spoken to some friends on the phone, and each has extended invitations for “SOP-compliant” (as desi a term as “dear” now) gatherings where we can wave at each other across garden furniture
This helped, until I saw the clingy lines at the Lahore airport’s immigration, at which point shouting at people became vastly more effective. There was a traffic jam at the outward luggage scanners because someone had been caught with an expensive bottle of champagne that they were trying to pass off as cider (Bon chance, ma fille!), but otherwise the crowds were relatively minimal, and as I exited the terminal into the thick, dense smoke outside, I coughed in deep phlegmy relief at being back home.
Jet lag doesn’t allow for more than a few hours of consciousness, but I’m still impressed that nearly everywhere I’ve seen people wearing masks and that most storefronts have written instructions barring people form entering without one. I’ve spoken to some friends on the phone, and each has extended invitations for “SOP-compliant” (as desi a term as “dear” now) gatherings where we can wave at each others across garden furniture.
As much as I’d love to, this does bring up a twin problem of a little game I’ve begun playing called “What do you want to die from first?”
On the one hand we are avoiding indoor meet ups because of Covid, while on the other we are told not to sit outside because Lahore is literally the most polluted city of the planet on most days. The longer you stay outside, the more you realize this is not hyperbolic. Three years on, I have still not gotten used to the itchy eyes, runny nose and constellation of pimples that the winter smog forces on you whenever you so much as sniff a flower. Furniture and plants alike are routinely covered in a thick dark layer of congealed smoke. One now has an array of masks for different occasions - viral, pollution, identity - and though the whole thing is depressingly dystopic, it is not unfamiliar.
Living in Pakistan has always meant cohabitation with a long list of existential threats. One’s lifespan can be severely shortened by religious zealots, steroids in meats, unclean water, unclean air, Dengue, hepatitis A-Z, parasites, heat disease, spectacularly efficient cancers, limited medical care and whatever-the-hell stress hormones do to your liver.
Denial, that broad-spectrum anti-psychotic that all Pakistanis employ to get through the day, works for maybe one or two issues. But faced with a charging armada of all of the horsemen of the Apocalypse simultaneously - to say nothing of the micoaggressionsi of bigotry, misogyny and societal pressures - there is now, I can feel, a calcified sense of fatigued resignation in the air not already taken up by smoke.
This morning I woke up and realized that the air I breath had to be filtered by a machine, as was the water I drank and the food I ate
This morning I woke up and realized that the air I breath had to be filtered by a machine, as was the water I drank and the food I ate. I went for a shower only to find the ground water in my area had dried up, a looming crisis I didnt have time to mourn when I saw the electric bill for the last month. Though none of these issues are new, none are being solved, and eventually we will buckle from the added psychic weight of burdens none of us as individuals are in a position to solve.
I’ve seen too much of the world to think its just Pakistan. The world is in crisis, and we are slowly beginning to see that it might not be the End so much as the Beginning of the End.
I know I’m painting a picture of gloom – albeit a hyper-realistic one – but what I’ve also noticed, in the first few moments of clarity that some time away can bring, is not the problems so much as the indefatigable sense of strength for forward motion I see around me. In lieu of actual policy changes, that is what lets me think, at least for now, to keep breathing.
Well...sort of.
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