Turning away from the majestic peaks, one finds the sprawling city just beneath the mighty shadow of the mountain. While climbing down the southeastern side of the mountain, visitors find themselves at crossroads dividing the falling steep road into two. Major one goes straight into the heart of the city studded with units of commercial enterprises on both sides. Other, diverting towards the eastern periphery, looks somewhat deserted at first, but after moving few miles away from crossroads point, steeped into the deep suburb of the city. During strikes and protests, this latter road turned into a conveyor of heavy traffic. Thick layers of dust on the trees and herbs, grew sparsely along the road, tell the story of long-held peace in the city and ensuring tranquillity in the nearby areas. The old Regal Colony, one of the biggest in the eastern periphery, extends along this road. Tea spots- official gossip centres in this area of the world and prime attraction of this periphery road, numbered the most with exception of few modern-style grocery stores and petrol pumps. As the road swirls outward, almost at five miles distance from the diversion point; it pushes the Regal Colony backwards to the rural suburbs and it becomes difficult to say whether the place is an extension of urban suburbs or beginning of rural district. Level of confusion is equally matched by the level of symmetry and the size of the Colony itself.
They say three streets constitute the whole of Regal Colony; in actual, there are a different number of streets enmeshing irregularly and creating an interesting asymmetry. In this haphazard place, an old white mosque with majestic patched dooms approachable from all three main streets thought to be the centre of the Colony. The area surrounding the mosque enjoys a certain level of commercial activity, especially after the Friday prayer. Fruits and vegetable vendors display their items arranging those on the long plastic sheets spread on the ground. Some also sold their items on donkey-cart or bike-cart. In this picture, the one busy spot is a place of attraction for children. Just a few meters away from the mosque, on the right corner in the direction of the sunset, Nasreen Mae has had her old bread baking centre. Surrounded by a bunch of old trees, and cart-size lawn, Nasreen maintains her economic enterprise boasting her personal friendship with the houses in the nearby streets. Nasreen, aka bread baker, is a wrinkle-faced, forty years old widower and mother of two. Her small hut enjoys the shadowy luxury of the oldest trees in the area. Nobody knows much about her with the exception of her love for her daughters and her utmost passion for her trees, herbs and lawn. Children from streets love to be there for baking of their bread for lunch and for dinner. The intriguing sight of the unusual big charpoy dotting the Nasreen’s hut always fascinates the young kids, and occasional gifts of candies from the old bread baking lady win her many friends and admirers among her cute little customers.
This particular area, if we can call it the pivot, is not that much spacious. Other than the mosque and its adjacent establishments, the shadowy enterprise of the Nasreen is the prominent spot. While coming from the main road, the enterprise looks like the extension of the establishment of the white mosque. In front of the enterprise, three smaller streets crawl into the houses of different sizes. In most part of the day, people emerge from these streets, offer their five-times prayer, do their part of shopping with movable vendors, bake their bread, and disappear into the streets again. Just before the sunset, as sun prepares for the final moves to the new world, Nasreen bakes few breads-thicker than usual, folds them into white soft handkerchief, puts her elder daughter in-charge of enterprise and makes her way to visit Balqees, a woman with keen and solemn demeanor, who lives in a humble dwelling in the second street from her enterprise. It was a tradition with Nasreen, now entering into its six years in a row.
Visitors find nothing exceptional in the outer look of the houses on these three streets, with exception of the majestic sight of the side peaks. This particular house, Nasreen visits regularly, is located two houses before the narrow junctions of the streets. Adjacent houses were of brick houses with exception of few houses having concrete walls around. All of the houses display front doors; some made of steel and painted in blue, green or white. Few houses welcome the visitors with large wooden front doors, but those are of an old style. The luxury of big houses has not been introduced in this particular area of the city. Sewerage was functional but pathetic and the street got flooded during torrential rains. The number of trees dotting the Nasreen’s bread baking hut is more than the combined trees in the houses along both sides of this street. Nasreen boasts this to her customers quite often.
Every evening, when Nasreen reaches the door of her friend, whom she nicknamed, nadan-innocently foolish, she stops a while and gazes the nameplate on the left corner of the front door. She can’t read and write, but every time, the image of that odd nameplate irritates unspeakable tremors inside her. It was kind of impossibility to ignore the presence of the nameplate while entering into Balqees’s home. “All the painful things have had odd entrances”, she used to think often. Balqees lives in a two-room house with veranda and small courtyard- roughly the size of her hut. Earthen pots containing herbs and flower plants are arranged in the corners of the veranda. Three charpoys, one big and two small, were there in the courtyard. A pedestal fan was there near the sidewall. Balqees is doing her handi in the small size outdoor kitchen at the left corner of the veranda while her elder daughterTasleema is helping her in preparing the dinner. The younger one Jamila is playing beside the brick pillar of the veranda.
This old-style brick house exhibits grimly outer look, but inner was different. The room at the left side in the veranda was given to newly-wed couples. The room was spacious enough to host all the items from her dowry. At the centre of it, in front of the back wall, was the big box containing most of the things from her dowry. On the left of it, a charpoy along with two chairs and a table are there. At the time of their wedding, the room had a cupboard pierced into the sidewall at the right. Balqees knitted curtains and coverings for that and put her crockery over there. Between the big box and cupboard, Balqees put her singar meez (table to put her cosmetics on) with a big mirror at the centre. Every inch of the room and every item in it shares her ten years of private life with Murad Ali. When she used to sit before the singar meez and Murad Ali made fun of her small curly hair, she got irritated and tried to fight with him or when while both fighting and Murad Ali tried to push her into ground from charpoy and she got frightened- all this preserved in their wedding room, with every entity in it, the room with strange carvings on the wooden door.
The elders’ room, to the right of theirs, has been used as a store-cum kitchen room. All sorts of crockery, charpoys, blankets, woods for fire, stove, box for containing flour, kitchen items are housed in this room. During winter, this room turned into a kitchen room for family and they also sleep over there. And her brother, who comes to stay with her quite often, sleeps in the veranda. And when Nasreen comes to visit Balqees, she also sits in this room and has had her hookah. She brings with herself the plastic bag full of tobacco leaves, folded into her dupatta and they both have long sessions of chat, mostly during the days when Nasreen was not working.
Today Nasreen is not feeling for hookah. She goes to Jamila and holds her in her arm and gives her candies. She puts a wide glance at the veranda and then at the mighty side peaks. Living in a state of wait is such a dangerous enterprise, thought Nasreen swallowing down her sob and forcing out a smile. A mother can find solace in the look of her daughters, how can one give companionship to the lone woman inside, Nasreen got sad, pierced into the eyes of Balqees, but soon turned her eyes away and started kissing Jamila. Our brains are just like flour stored in a cusp of the skull ready to be baked, but it requires baking to come into proper shape. Even flour can’t withstand the terrible wait! She helped her out from the inconsequential ramblings of her mind, handed over the folded bread to Tasleema and starting chatting with Balqees.
They dined together and Nasreen went back for her evening time baking shift. The day is a busy part of life for Balqees. Jamila is a pretty little doll but like a weak and dependent kid; she needs the care of the mother. In the second winter of her wedding, the birth of Tasleema adored their home, and then the birth of Jamila-few months before that ominous morning; she felt an immense sense of happiness becoming a mother. Life never remains the same for her afterwards even until now.
It has been six years; Balqees developed the habit of gazing mysterious side peaks at night. Most often, she went back into time; went back into that ominous foggy morning caressing Jamila sleeping on a small baby cot beside her charpoy; went back into feeling of fear she felt for the first time when she heard the news of soldiers missing alive at Siachen glacier- one of the highest and the chilliest battlefield on earth. In their old days, upon the same charpoy, she rested beside the warm body of Murad Ali lying down on the bunch of white soft pillows from her dowry. He often told her stories about the life at Siachen where they used to live with white snow; they had had snow around them, beneath them and above them; snow does not kill a soldier; it does not let him live either, Murad Ali burst into laughter and loved the sight of display of innocence wandering on the face of Balqees, she reminisces about all this when she is alone in her wedding room. She went into the days when occasional skirmishes erupted between Pakistani and Indian troops and later turned into severe fighting between two armies. She remembered how the letters of Murad Ali were filled with the details of fighting for the highest snowy peaks and how she had gone into a series of prayers for his safety.
She spent most of her time cuddling her memories with him. The charpoy upon where they first introduced to each other, the pillows upon they rested together, the mirror that used to give enticements to Balqees and the very room-the temple of love and belongingness was her whole world. Their wildest dreams are trapped inside that room, the room at the left side with strange carvings on the wooden door. She has had no grave to turn to except the side peaks, standing so mysteriously, and piercing deep inside her.
Only Nasreen, with the exception of her imagination, is her only link to the outer world. Even the world around the white mosque; the world in and around the Regal Colony; the world around that small road that emerges from famous diversion point; the world that breaths on both sides of the major road; and the valley that animates the whole city beneath the mighty peaks are all stranger to her. Sometimes, while being awake late at night and gazing the stars, she finds a strange transcendence inside her towards the mighty side peaks. She imagines herself on the peaks filled with white snow all around. She wishes to be around snow; wishes to feel its softness and to find solace-in-real which she often feels in her imagination. Nasreen once told her that there was a road climbing up the peaks and people often went there for a picnic. Most of the time struggling with her thoughts, laying her head on the white pillow and gazing the stars and side peaks; Balqees could not conceive the whole idea of the road leading to the peaks.