I’m not a smoker, but if my doctor diagnoses me with lung cancer in the decades to come, I could only look back to the semester I spent in Pakistan last year.
We passed many summer, monsoon, fall and winter afternoons perched the atop the brick windowsill next to the cafeteria, “the” because it was ours. “Ours” because our cigarette ashes and chai stains and whispers of our deepest secrets are the territory markers used to claim ownership, at least on those Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
Our windowsill. Bottom right.
When I first arrived it was humid and sweltering. The three of us would meet at that windowsill after every Business Management class, sometimes stopping to get the smallest cups of chai I have ever seen. We’d put the Lipton tea bags, sugar and hot water into the tiny paper cups with the LUMS logo and the cute little paper handles. Be warned though, their cuteness is only a distraction - the first time I had one I grabbed the handles while searching for money in my wallet, the cup flipped, and I spilled my tea all over the place.
I’d bum a cigarette off M. as usual. She started to just hand one to me while getting one for herself soon enough. I remember often wearing the new lawn shalwar kamiz I had gotten stitched, with a straight, ankle-length pant. Leaning back against the windowsill, a burning cigarette between my fingers and my pants scrunched up above my ankles, gushing about our secret crushes and listening to my new friends’ hilarious comments on passersby…. I never wanted it to end. Those excuses for chai cups were where our cigarettes went to die.
I loved the cheap thrill of being a girl smoking on a university campus in Pakistan. I’d muse over how ironic it was that I was wearing shalwar kameez and a shawl according to Islamic standards of modesty, and yet I was smoking, leaning on the window with my feet up and talking all sorts of inappropriate nonsense. I didn’t care who Bob Dylan or the classic British comedians were, but I listened and laughed and interjected with my own “American” points of view. Staring out into the crowds of students, many of whom were smoking as well, I was just content to be in the company of witty and intelligent and drama-free girls while taking in all the sights, smells and sounds of a new place.
At night after volleyball practice, I’d walk back down the main path that passes by the cafeteria and classroom building, seeing groups of girls and boys sitting on steps, smoking, laughing, effortlessly switching between Punjabi and Urdu. The more religious-looking groups always seemed relatively quiet and reserved. I couldn’t hear their conversations from the other side of the path like I could everyone else’s. There would be someone on a guitar, cooing well-known Urdu songs, sometimes new ones I’d never heard before and were probably original. The group of girls and boys around the singer would go wild and follow along.
I wondered how many pairs on that pathway were in love, but would soon end up marrying someone else according to their family’s wishes. On campus, the mixing of the sexes seems like the most normal and accepted phenomenon, be it all night long – as long it’s out in the open. But what happens when they graduate? Can they approach their parents and say they fell in love with their classmate over the past few years and would like to marry them? I know it’s possible, but it’s definitely not the norm.
Don’t Worry!
When I have children, I’m going to allow them to read this and let them know that a dependency on drugs and alcohol will never help them attain pure happiness- that actually goes for a dependency on anything. If you can’t enjoy life without drugs then what’s the point of it all? I never bought a pack for myself. I don’t advocate smoking. Sorry to any family members reading this. I’ve practiced self-control and know what’s important in my life, so you don’t have to worry about me.
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